earthquake description

There was a 7.0 earthquake in New Zealand this morning (apparently no fatalities so far). But I was really struck by this first-hand description:

“The house felt like it was on wheels, like it was rolling around on marbles…”

I’ve been in three minor earthquakes in my life, all of them too minor to be scary.

1. In childhood, there was a small earthquake in Iowa. But I was riding in a car at the time and didn’t feel a thing. You might not think of Iowa as earthquake country, but I grew up just a couple of miles south of a fault, and the Mississippi River valley has had a number of extremely destructive quakes, though none since the 1812 NEW MADRID EARTHQUAKE in southern Missouri, which filled the air with sulphurous vapor and caused the Mississippi to flow backwards for several minutes.

2. On my only visit to Los Angeles so far, in December 1994, I was awakened by an earthquake. But when you’re jarred from sleep like that, it’s too confusing to be frightening.

3. About my second year in Egypt, there was an earthquake strong enough to make my floor lamp swing, but again it was minor. Cairo did have a PRETTY BAD EARTHQUAKE IN 1992 that killed 545 people.