Shake it up baby, now
Is it wrong to like earthquakes?
On one level, I've always taken pleasure when Nature rears up to smack us around a little, remind us who's boss. This is not to say that I don't feel for the families affected by said natural disaster, only that I believe our species is a little too presumptuous for our own good and it does us some good to remember that our massive skyscrapers and endless highways would rapidly crumble into nothing were we not always shoring them up against the busy fingers of Nature. It's only unfortunate that the victims are almost always the very poor - Wall Street execs would better deserve the talking to.
We had an earthquake last night, at about 12:45. Pavel came bursting into my bedroom, saying "Wake up, guerita. Do you hear the sirens?"
Indeed I did, from the radio in the next room: woooaaaaaahhhmmm woooaaaaahhhmmm.
"I'm not wearing any pants," I mumbled, clambering out of bed and thinking "an earthquake?! really?!! hoorah!!"
The lights went out. I felt this sudden rush of excitement, expecting at any moment the rumbling, rattling spectacle of the black and white Japanese security camera footage-type earthquake. We fumbled through the dark and crammed ourselves - Pavel, Luis and myself - into the kitchen doorway. Luis, who is remarkably sensitive about such things, had his head against the doorframe and was whimpering slightly. The dog was jumping about madly.
"Do you feel it?" asked Pavel. "Yes!" Luis moaned. "No!" I whined, desperate to feel it, straining to feel it. I listened for walls popping - nothing. I tried to make out the curtains and hanging lamps but saw no movement. I felt a bit dizzy, but wasn't sure if that was the effects of the earth moving underneath my feet or having been woken up suddenly, trussed up in a wool blanket, and towed to the other side of the house. (We've since decided, collectively, it was the earthquake.)
And then it was over. We sat by candlelight for awhile before the lights came on, while ambulances wailed through the streets.
No, there were no injuries and, other than one precariously leaning building, no apparent major damage. The ambulances, as it turns out, were for the many many people who have panic and heart attacks every time the earth moves. Because as flippant as I am about earthquakes in Mexico City, the vast majority of people remember 1985 far too clearly to share my glee at possible doom.
On September 19, 1985, at 7:17 in the morning, Mexico City was rocked by an 8.1 earthquake (last night was 6.3) which devastated the city: buildings collapsed, killing anywhere between 10,000 and 50,000 people, depending on your source, and causing property damage upwards of $5 billion US. My she-roommate, Isadora, at the tender age of about 11, was packed up and moved to the northern state of Chihuahua after all the houses surrounding her grandmother's house neatly dominoed into the centre, leaving just her grandmother's standing. One of my students described running down a hotel hallway dressed only in a towel, watching the floors buckle under her feet and the tiles pop off the walls. A surprising number of newborn babies were fished out of the pancaked downtown hospital by workers with flashlights - they're now known as Mexico's Miracle Babies.
Buildings can be built to withstand a variety of earthquake movement, explained an architect friend to me, but the 1985 shook the ground in three ways: (pardon my technical language here) front to back, side to side, and up and down. The double resonance coupled with a soft sediment ground base made the earth a giant spring, causing buildings of more than six floors to sway nearly a meter, sometimes knocking one building into the next. In three minutes, Mexico's downtown core and numerous other neighbourhoods were devastated.
Mexico City was declared a disaster zone. Telephone lines were cut and a communications tower burst into flame, leaving residents without means of communication for several days. There was a pervasive smell of gas and the government pled for people not to light matches. There was looting and desperate calls for blood donors.
Surviving this would be traumatizing, indeed, but the real fear comes from the fact that it absolutely will happen again.
Mexico City lies in a great basin formed by the surrounding volcanic mountains, only one of which (Popocatepetl) is still active. Back when the Aztecs were thirstily terrorizing their neighbouring tribes, the city was a small island in the middle of Lake Texcoco; post-conquest, however, the Spanish were quick to drain the lake to make room for the rapidly-expanding city. The result of this is that a large part of Mexico City now is built on unconsolidated lake-bed sediment. Walking through the Historical Centre, you will notice the number of buildings now standing at rather shocking angles as a result of their unsteady base.
Southern Mexico lies beside the tectonic rift between the North American Plate and the Cocos Plate. In the 20th century, more than 35 earthquakes were recorded with a magnitude greater than 7.0. The 1985 earthquake had its epicentre at a well-known gap at the border of the states of Guerrero and Michoacan, known as the Michoacan Gap; this gap was filled in during the three minute quake and its 7.5 magnitude aftershock.
Earthquakes are quite reliable natural disasters, being as they are the sudden release of pressure that builds up beneath the tectonic plates. Southern Mexico experienced devastating earthquakes in 1957, 1979, 1985, and, most recently, 1999, making gaps of 22 years, 6 years and 14 years. 1957 and 1985 were both extreme, with a gap of 28 years. Today it is 2007, making it 8 years since the last major earthquake and 22 since the last severe earthquake.
Tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick...
Still, I like them. I've not experienced more than faint dizziness, and I come from the stable soil of the frozen north where a particularly bad winter storm or a tornado is the worst we can expect, so I'm a bit ignorant of their potential for destruction and fear. So is it wrong to want, just once, to experience the rattling and creaking drama of it all? I don't want any loss of life or injury, and I'd really prefer it if the hotels and hospitals remain intact, but...
Or is that just twisted? Really, you can be honest with me.
On one level, I've always taken pleasure when Nature rears up to smack us around a little, remind us who's boss. This is not to say that I don't feel for the families affected by said natural disaster, only that I believe our species is a little too presumptuous for our own good and it does us some good to remember that our massive skyscrapers and endless highways would rapidly crumble into nothing were we not always shoring them up against the busy fingers of Nature. It's only unfortunate that the victims are almost always the very poor - Wall Street execs would better deserve the talking to.
We had an earthquake last night, at about 12:45. Pavel came bursting into my bedroom, saying "Wake up, guerita. Do you hear the sirens?"
Indeed I did, from the radio in the next room: woooaaaaaahhhmmm woooaaaaahhhmmm.
"I'm not wearing any pants," I mumbled, clambering out of bed and thinking "an earthquake?! really?!! hoorah!!"
The lights went out. I felt this sudden rush of excitement, expecting at any moment the rumbling, rattling spectacle of the black and white Japanese security camera footage-type earthquake. We fumbled through the dark and crammed ourselves - Pavel, Luis and myself - into the kitchen doorway. Luis, who is remarkably sensitive about such things, had his head against the doorframe and was whimpering slightly. The dog was jumping about madly.
"Do you feel it?" asked Pavel. "Yes!" Luis moaned. "No!" I whined, desperate to feel it, straining to feel it. I listened for walls popping - nothing. I tried to make out the curtains and hanging lamps but saw no movement. I felt a bit dizzy, but wasn't sure if that was the effects of the earth moving underneath my feet or having been woken up suddenly, trussed up in a wool blanket, and towed to the other side of the house. (We've since decided, collectively, it was the earthquake.)
And then it was over. We sat by candlelight for awhile before the lights came on, while ambulances wailed through the streets.
No, there were no injuries and, other than one precariously leaning building, no apparent major damage. The ambulances, as it turns out, were for the many many people who have panic and heart attacks every time the earth moves. Because as flippant as I am about earthquakes in Mexico City, the vast majority of people remember 1985 far too clearly to share my glee at possible doom.
On September 19, 1985, at 7:17 in the morning, Mexico City was rocked by an 8.1 earthquake (last night was 6.3) which devastated the city: buildings collapsed, killing anywhere between 10,000 and 50,000 people, depending on your source, and causing property damage upwards of $5 billion US. My she-roommate, Isadora, at the tender age of about 11, was packed up and moved to the northern state of Chihuahua after all the houses surrounding her grandmother's house neatly dominoed into the centre, leaving just her grandmother's standing. One of my students described running down a hotel hallway dressed only in a towel, watching the floors buckle under her feet and the tiles pop off the walls. A surprising number of newborn babies were fished out of the pancaked downtown hospital by workers with flashlights - they're now known as Mexico's Miracle Babies.
Buildings can be built to withstand a variety of earthquake movement, explained an architect friend to me, but the 1985 shook the ground in three ways: (pardon my technical language here) front to back, side to side, and up and down. The double resonance coupled with a soft sediment ground base made the earth a giant spring, causing buildings of more than six floors to sway nearly a meter, sometimes knocking one building into the next. In three minutes, Mexico's downtown core and numerous other neighbourhoods were devastated.
Mexico City was declared a disaster zone. Telephone lines were cut and a communications tower burst into flame, leaving residents without means of communication for several days. There was a pervasive smell of gas and the government pled for people not to light matches. There was looting and desperate calls for blood donors.
Surviving this would be traumatizing, indeed, but the real fear comes from the fact that it absolutely will happen again.
Mexico City lies in a great basin formed by the surrounding volcanic mountains, only one of which (Popocatepetl) is still active. Back when the Aztecs were thirstily terrorizing their neighbouring tribes, the city was a small island in the middle of Lake Texcoco; post-conquest, however, the Spanish were quick to drain the lake to make room for the rapidly-expanding city. The result of this is that a large part of Mexico City now is built on unconsolidated lake-bed sediment. Walking through the Historical Centre, you will notice the number of buildings now standing at rather shocking angles as a result of their unsteady base.
Southern Mexico lies beside the tectonic rift between the North American Plate and the Cocos Plate. In the 20th century, more than 35 earthquakes were recorded with a magnitude greater than 7.0. The 1985 earthquake had its epicentre at a well-known gap at the border of the states of Guerrero and Michoacan, known as the Michoacan Gap; this gap was filled in during the three minute quake and its 7.5 magnitude aftershock.
Earthquakes are quite reliable natural disasters, being as they are the sudden release of pressure that builds up beneath the tectonic plates. Southern Mexico experienced devastating earthquakes in 1957, 1979, 1985, and, most recently, 1999, making gaps of 22 years, 6 years and 14 years. 1957 and 1985 were both extreme, with a gap of 28 years. Today it is 2007, making it 8 years since the last major earthquake and 22 since the last severe earthquake.
Tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick...
Still, I like them. I've not experienced more than faint dizziness, and I come from the stable soil of the frozen north where a particularly bad winter storm or a tornado is the worst we can expect, so I'm a bit ignorant of their potential for destruction and fear. So is it wrong to want, just once, to experience the rattling and creaking drama of it all? I don't want any loss of life or injury, and I'd really prefer it if the hotels and hospitals remain intact, but...
Or is that just twisted? Really, you can be honest with me.
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