Before setting off for Nottingham this morning I briefly caught the news that Chile had experienced an earthquake, though I was unaware of details. For the rest of the day I was in committee with no opportunity to catch up on news. The next I heard was more than eight hours later as I drove my car to get petrol and turned on the car radio just in time to hear the tsunami warning sirens in Hawaii start up during a live interview. Obviously some of the effecst of the earthquake was about to be experienced thousands of miles away.
It brought back memories of the time that Doreen and I visited Hawaii on a "once in a lifetime" holiday to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary and our birthdays. As part of that incredible experience Doreen and I went whale watching on her birthday, and I flew over the world's most active volcano on my birthday. From the air I could see the devastation steadily caused by the volcano simmering below me pouring molten lava down the mountainside and into the sea. On a separate occasion we had parked our car in an area where a sign told us how an entire school had been swept into the sea by a tsunami. From the helicopter I was shown the bay where hundreds of Hawaiians died retrieving fish left behind by a retreating sea, oblivious of what was about to happen as the sea returned at the speed of a jet plane.
Today tsunami warning systems in the Pacific and intelligent building regulations in Chile will have made living in such dangerous locations more safe. But my thoughts and prayers have been for those caught up in the disaster in Chile especially. Many years ago I experienced an earthquake in Cornwall. It was indeed very unsettling to feel the land move in that way, but I cannot imagine what it must be like to experience that many hundreds time more powerfully.
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