Your friends ask, “how do you feel about earthquakes?”  I was fixing a screen in a guest bedroom the other day.  A guest had stuffed some plastic is a hole in the bedroom screen to keep out mosquitoes I presume.  I took out the screen to do something a little less unattractive but the screen just wouldn’t fit quite right.  I hate the screens and windows here as they never seem to fit quite right.  It was this particular day it suddenly dawned on me the most likely reason the screen was not coming in or out or sliding properly was because past tremors from earthquakes and after shocks had shifted the building.  One day I do remember an earthquake was so strong you could feel the entire building sway.  And mind you I am talking about a three story large poured and block cement building.
This is not only a massive amount of heavy cement and steel rebar but also build on solid rock.  I would think it would take a bit to sway this building.

NEWS FLASH Calgary Herald March 11, 2012  ” VANCOUVER — Anacla, a First Nations village on the west coast of Vancouver Island, is moving up, heading for higher, safer ground. A new “big house” has been built 50 metres up from the pounding surf of Pachena Bay. And there are plans to replace the 49 houses on the beach, which could be swallowed by the sea with just minutes’ notice. It has happened before, says Tom Happynook, a hereditary chief with the Huu-ay-Aht First Nations, recalling how the village in the bay vanished in 1700, when a quake kicked up giant waves off Canada’s West Coast. “The village was completely wiped out,” says Happynook.”

I find the odd crack in a swimming pool wall or a cement railing and I look at it fondly like a new wrinkle in an old friendly face, and try to put a story to it.  Face it, our ground shifts regularly, we have a hot molten center for a planet (so they tell me) and the cracks amuse me when they involve neat things like hot springs.

Now it seems earthquakes are not a safe haven by staying in Canada and in fact they are everywhere http://www.moorlandschool.co.uk/earth/images/Earthquakefaq.htm and frequent too.  It is a strange feeling to feel an earthquake sway your house with sufficient force to sway a hammock or a handing light fixture but it settlles and life goes on and often I worry about my Canadian friends living in coastal BC cities and Vancouver Island.

The most recent earthquake I felt was a 5.3 off the coast of Puerto Rico, a Commonwealth country and unincorporated territory of the United States. My hammock in the West Indies feels pretty safe these days.  As for the advantages of watching a tsutami from a hilltop location, well that’s another post.