Friends in Need When Nature Hiccups, Natural Disasters forum Options

[belleraphon1]

Sincerely hope all you UMSFers on the West Coast are OK! Read Emily's blog....
http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001576/

Widfires and now an earthquake... scary...

Concern from an Ohioan who only worries about getting snowed in once or twice a winter season.

Craig

p.s. With global climate change this forum may get a few posts or two in this century!

[jasedm]

Glad to hear all ok over there. We're very lucky here in the UK as far as earthquakes go - the biggest one in the last quarter century was a 5.2 Richter shock centered near Market Rasen in Lincolnshire in February this year - enough to knock over a few Victorian chimneys.....The strongest ever officially recorded was 6.1 on the Richter scale, recorded in 1931.
I've lived in the UK all my life and never personally felt any tremors (mind you I do sleep like a log).
Below just for interest is the record of all fatalities (11) attributed to earthquakes in the UK since 1580:

Date Epicentre Magnitude Number of deaths, Place, Cause
6 Apr 1580 Dover Straits >6 2, London, falling masonry
15 Jul 1757 Penzance 4.5 1, Penryn, fell out of window
7 Sep 1801 Comrie 4.5 2, near Edinburgh, falling masonry
18 Sep 1833 Chichester 3 1, Cocking, falling rock
22 Apr 1884 Colchester 4.5 1, Wivenhoe, shock, (uncertain)
1, Manningtree, suicide
1 Feb 1915 Conisbrough <3 1, Conisbrough, Falling rock
7 Jun 1931 North Sea 5.6 1, Hull, Shock?
12 Dec 1940 Porthmadog 4.7 1, Criccieth, Fell downstairs

Of these, five were arguably caused by panic at the tremors, leaving only 6 certifiable deaths due to earthquake damage in the last four centuries.

[AndyG]

We're very lucky here in the UK as far as earthquakes go

We certainly are. The first of the three I've felt - and the biggest - was on Boxing Day, 1979. It happened in the early hours, and it was an odd experience walking up to something like that - both the novelty of the event and the semi-conscious state I was in made it all feel very unreal.

Andy