Saturday, March 7, 2009

First Taste of a Quake

A map of the earthquake's radius from Geoscience Australia.

What could that sound be?

A heavy animal on the roof?

Outside? A gentle roar

No, it's a shaking

The Hut is shaking

Yes, an earthquake

And it's still going, not stopping

But constant

Time enough to consider

The movement of the geological plates

As they made their adjustments

Before calming down

And the quake finished

Only to shake a little later

In the night and in the morning

Though this part of Australia has had earth tremors before, this was Peter's first consciously felt tremor. The Hut seemed to have structure that allowed for a little more dramatic sound, the acoustic walls, the looseness of the windows. We may have missed it completely in the city.

The tremor measured 4.7 on the Richter scale was felt just at 8:55 pm Friday March 6, in places within the green ring on the map. We were located just north of the epicentre at the green/red dot. It was our state's strongest earthquake since 2001, when a 4.8 magnitude tremor was felt in Swan Hill at the north of the state. The epicentre was close to Korumburra, in South Gippsland.

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