Rare Earth - Earthquakes around the Planet

Earthquakes have been in the news quite a lot this year! Haiti, Chile, and most recently, Christchurch, New Zealand.

But what is the 'Earthquake Experience' really like? Our friend, Pat Boland, lives in Christchurch. She and husband Bob felt the first shakes on September 4 and are living through the continuing shakes that are occurring. Here is Pat's report....

Hi Susan and Blair, or should I say Good evening?
As it is evening two days after the earthquake which has rocked the sox off us in ChCh even if we are lucky enough for it to be figuratively and not actually.

Bob and I and our immediate family have been lucky enough to be in the first category though many hundreds of our fair city have not been so fortunate and we are still experiencing aftershocks. There was one as I am typing 2 1/2 days after the initial shock at 4.35 AM last Saturday.

How fortunate that it happened then. If it had been during the day loss of life would have to have been a factor.

We ourselves experienced a shock of about 30 seconds but it was not too traumatic as nothing collapsed and furniture did not move, etc. but others have very scary tales to tell. There were many subsequent shocks in the next hour and they have continued since. The devastation has taken place in pockets throughout the city with seemingly no obvious reason for it to happen in that particular place. Things like water table, foundations on sand/peat, quality of workmanship, and age of buildings must be factors.

You talk to people and they say "no we are OK" and you begin to think it cannot be too bad but for those whose houses are destroyed or are going to have to be bull dosed (and there are hundreds of them) life will not be the same. And the memory of those few moments for them will be a challenge.

For me it seemed surreal to be sitting in the sun porch on a clear windless sunny day with a stunning view of the Southern Alps and the Estuary with a full tide (which remained most of the day) with everything as normal and knowing that a few km away peoples lives and aspirations had changed perhaps for ever.

Enough of this we are all battling on. The City is closed for a couple of days so Bob can not go to work. As I work in the suburbs it is work as usual.

Pat Boland
Christchurch, NZ
September 6, 2010

Remembering September 11, 2001 from Berlin

September 11, 2001 - Every American remembers this day, now nine years ago, in his own way. We are far away, in Berlin, so we decided to spend this day remembering another event that changed history, August 13, 1961, the day that construction of the Berlin Wall began. At the great Brandenburg Gate, we joined many others to gather around this Berlin icon to admire its tall columns topped by the Quadriga, the statue of Victory in a chariot drawn by four horses. We followed the course of the Wall north past the Reichstag building and the other great buildings of the Government Quarter to Bernauer Strasse and the Berlin Wall Memorial. The Wall separated West and East Berliners from each other indiscriminately as family members and friends were separated by this incredibly effective barrier.

As we spent the day, walking along this stretch of the Wall where so many incidents occurred, watching the films, viewing the photos, reading the documentation, and seeing the remnants of the great slabs that made up the Wall, we were reminded that we had lived through the whole history of the Wall in Berlin. For us, it was the essence of Communist tyranny, the testimonial that such terrorism and tyranny can exist only if the people are forcibly confined and many tried to escape.

Surely the experience of the Berlin Wall and the ways that people reacted must provide some messages for us today as we consider the terrible events of September 11, 2001. After all, the Wall came down and now Berlin is a city of peace and hope, continuing to renew itself, to provide a good life for a rich diversity of people. Perhaps New York City will also become a city of peace and hope when enough time has gone by. But nine years may not be enough time, we fear. Still, we are hopeful that time will heal the wounds and that in the interim, people will try harder to learn tolerance as the struggle to eradicate terrorism and tyranny continues.