Yep! That’s right! I have now experienced my first earthquake! I would have posted earlier, but we just now got our internet working again at my house!
Yesterday morning, Carly and I were waiting for our Spanish class to start in the library (upstairs). Even on a good day, the library feels a little rickety if someone walks by too quickly. When we started to feel it, Carly and I both just looked at each other, completely unsure of what was happening. Luckily Judy saw us and told us we needed to get to our “safe spot”. ACM has had the whole building inspected and apparently the safest spot during an earthquake is in the back garden. Unfortunately, I had a mug of hot tea in my hand when this all started, so when Judy told us to run downstairs, I was running with hot tea in hand. Between a hurricane and my frantic running to get outside, the tea went everywhere. Once it was about half empty, I realized I could set it down on one of the tables nearby. It hadn’t occurred to me that I wouldn’t need my tea in an earthquake. As we were running downstairs we could hear a few things crashing around us (turned out to just be a small plant in Mario’s office that had fallen off of the table). Everyone made it into the garden quickly, but the earthquake seemed to go on forever. We were all struggling to keep our balance in the grass while we watched the plants and buildings around us sway. As soon as it ended our teachers tuned into the news to get the official report. Here are all the facts I know:
-It was a 7.6 earthquake (which is absolutely devastating in most places), but only very minor damage was reported.
-Only 1 death occurred during the earthquake, whereas a quake of the same magnitude in 1991 killed 47 people (a 6.1 quake in 2009 killed 40 people).
-The only damage I’ve heard of are some problems with the roads and minor structural damage near the epicenter. And apparently all of the swimming pools sloshed half of their water out!
-The epicenter was in Guanacaste, Costa Rica (north west of San Jose, on the Pacific coast).
-There were temporary tsunami warnings, but nothing actually happened.
-Everyone is saying that this was the second strongest quake in Costa Rican history, but I haven’t actually seen it in writing yet.
-Geologists have been waiting for this quake for about 20 years, but they couldn’t predict when it would happen or how strong it would be.
-The north west peninsula (at the epicenter) is now 1 meter higher than it was before, which means the ocean is something like 300 centimeters farther out than it was on Tuesday.
-Every single tico (Costa Rican) I talk to asks what I thought of the earthquake and then says “Bienvenidos a (welcome to) Costa Rica!”
I can confidently say that I am NOT a fan of earthquakes, but it’s pretty cool that we got to experience such a famous one. Especially since this weekend we are taking a trip to the Arenal Volcano to learn about the local geology. All of our readings and conversations for class have been about the earthquake and how it all connects to our field trip this weekend. Pretty cool timing!
I’m still working on getting photos on here (unfortunately no one else had a wordpress blog, so no one knows how to help), but I’ll get them up as soon as I can! I’ve got tons already!
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