Journal: News & Comment

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Hey now, shakey shakey!

This morning we had an earthquake here in Vancouver. It wasn't major, but apparently measured 6.8 on the Richter scale. It was centred about 17 km northeast of Olympia, Washington, south of Seattle and a few hundred kilometres south of here.

In Seattle, some buildings suffered significant damage. Bill Gates had a speech interrupted (there's video on the Web).

Here in my basement office, the walls swayed, doors rattled, and I found myself feeling a cold dread. I stood in a doorway for a moment until the tremor passed, then tried calling my parents' house next door to see how my two kids were doing -- but the phones were out. So I walked next door instead. About 20 minutes later my wife called me -- which let me know the phones were back on. It's the first quake I can remember feeling so strongly since the 1970s.

A couple of weeks ago there was a similar quake in Haida Gwaii, the Queen Charlotte Islands north of here. We live in an active tectonic zone. And it's good to be reminded of that every once in a while.

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