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EARTHQUAKE

Writer's picture: strie4strie4

A few days ago, while our son, Will, and daughter-in-law, Helena, were on holiday in Cyprus, they experienced an earthquake, quite a considerable one, it would seem. Its focal point was about 15 miles out to sea off the coast of Paphos on the western tip of the island. Never one to pass up the opportunity for some levity, Will posted a news report from the island on the family WhatsApp: ‘Girl trapped in bedroom after Paphos earthquake.’ “Don’t worry, folks,” he told us, “Helena escaped….eventually.” He then went on to describe the encounter. “The room was shaking for 7-8 seconds. By the time we realised what was happening, it stopped. It was 4.9 on the Richie Benaud scale.” Well, I did say he was a joker.

My wife and I experienced an earthquake whilst on holiday in Kefalonia many years ago and I can assure you we were in no joking state of mind. We rushed out of our apartment and the wall running the length of the balcony was literally wiggling, rather like a snake moving across the desert floor. The locals were alarmed, that was obvious, but not panic-stricken; they have learned to live with the restless, turbulent ground beneath their feet. I forget the actual numbers of the Richter Scale that it registered, five point something, as I recall. We had uncomfortable memories of the film Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, which features the Great Kefalonia Earthquake of 1953, causing widespread damage and killing hundreds of inhabitants. Most earthquakes are not dangerous, we told ourselves in a stiff talking to… but of course some are.

I shall never forget listening to my opposite number, Simon Halliday, the Master i/c Cricket at Harrow, as he recounted his team’s experience of the terrible tsunami that hit Sri Lanka on Boxing Day of 2004, during the school’s cricket tour of the island. They were at the picturesque ground in Galle, fringed on two sides by the Indian Ocean and overlooked by the high wall of the fort. They were busy at practice in the nets before play when shouts alerted them to something happening out to sea. The paid little heed and continued batting and bowling until one by one attention was distracted as they became aware of a great wall of water rushing towards them. “I sensed that some of the boys were distracted and staring out to sea,” Simon told me, “I turned round and instantly I knew what it was.” He was a Geography teacher, and he knew it was a tsunami and in their exposed position he recognised they had little chance of surviving. First, they all scrambled onto the roof of the pavilion but as the force of the tidal wave hit and the waters, rushing and swirling, steadily rose, it was obvious they would soon be swept away. With remarkable poise and presence of mind, he led his boys in a perilous scramble up the walls of the fort, even as the water was lapping around their feet. The walls held and Simon gave silent thanks to the Dutch and Portuguese engineers who built it in the 16thcentury. Remarkably all 15 of the Harrow party survived but one of the parents accompanying the tour did not. The tsunami killed over 225.000 people across ten countries. In Sri Lanka alone over 30.000 lost their lives.

During my degree course in English, I had to study the works of Joseph Conrad, the Polish/British novelist of the late 19thand early 20th century. He served in both the French and British merchant navies and many of his stories have a nautical setting. His vivid description of a tsunami remains with me to this day. It is often called a tidal wave, but this is a misnomer, for the wave thus caused has nothing to do with the tide. A tsunami is caused by an earthquake many hundreds of miles offshore. Those in its path speak of a terrible and prolonged shuddering in the ground, a sudden change in the character of the ocean, a distant roaring like the sound of a passing goods train and a noticeable and unusual receding of the tide. Even the wildlife, birds and animals, have disappeared; they can sense something strange is in the air. The run-up of the rushing water caused by the friction off the rising sea bottom as it nears the shore uproots trees, pulls buildings from their foundations and carries boats far inshore, often washing away entire beaches. The Severn Bore it most certainly isn’t.

In point of fact, we do suffer from earthquakes in Britain but most of them are so small that we don’t notice them. Sometimes we do. And they can be quite disturbing. The largest known earthquake in this country occurred near Dogger Bank with a magnitude of 6.0 but as it happened 60 miles offshore, the effect was minimal. The most damaging one was in Colchester in 1884, which did cause considerable damage to buildings, chimneys and walls. The most recent serious earthquake (5.2) struck Market Rasen in Lincolnshire in 2008 with tremors felt as far apart as Newcastle and London. But to put things into perspective, the earthquake that struck Japan in 2011 registered 9.0 on the Richie Benaud scale, which measures out at 31,600 times more powerful than one registering 6.0. Eh? Ah, but it’s all to do with the logarithmic nature of the Richter Scale, and if you think I am about to explain that, you have another think coming.

“I feel the earth move under my feet…”

Carole King was certainly not referring to a Californian earthquake in her hit from the album Tapestry. She is famously coy about the subjects of her songs, but she has never denied her love affair with James Taylor. In fact, the phrase ‘the earth moved’ to describe sexual ecstasy was only coined in 1940, with the publication of Ernest Hemingway’s novel about love and war, For Whom the Bells Toll, set during the Spanish Civil War. When the heroine, Maria, is asked by one of the rebel leaders if anything happened between her and the hero, Jordan, she replies, “The earth moved!” She certainly wasn’t referring to the rebel guns.

Fortuitously, there is no Richter Scale to gauge the power of sexual congress. I mean it would be disappointing not to attain 10.0 on the odd occasion, wouldn’t it? However, it’s impossible for an earthquake to register double figures. No fault in the earth’s crust is long enough to generate a magnitude of 10; if it did, more than likely the earth would explode. And that would put paid to any amorous escapades, platonic or ardent, 3.1 or 8.6.

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Andrew Murtagh

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