Earthquake hits the UK.

September 23, 2002 2:28 AM

Earthquake hits the UK. 'Big one' too, 4.8 on the Richter scale, so not quite California standard. Anyone want to share their experience?
posted by derbs (28 comments total)

the Earth sure moved for me
posted by JonnyX at 2:30 AM on September 23, 2002

Epicenter was near Wolverhampton apparently, so i'm only about 50 miles or so away, in Nottingham.

I was half asleep at the time, but when it hit i knew it was something out of the ordinary. Funny thing is, there were 2 'shakings' of exactly the same intensity, same duration (about 5 seconds), with about 5 seconds in between them.

Quite a scary sensation on the second floor of an old and slightly delapidated victorian house! :)
posted by derbs at 2:32 AM on September 23, 2002

what were you doing at the time JonnyX? :)
posted by derbs at 2:32 AM on September 23, 2002

My brothers have finished digging the tunnel!

And now our plans for invasion shall succeed!
posted by Smart Dalek at 2:55 AM on September 23, 2002

here was my paranoia-inspired post [elsewhere] immediately after it happened!
posted by rich_skinflowers at 2:59 AM on September 23, 2002

Woke me up, but then I'm in Birmingham, so was pretty close to the epicenter.
posted by MattM at 3:00 AM on September 23, 2002

I felt it upstairs, in bed, but my partner, on the ground floor, didn't. Weird sensation - like being shaken like dice in a fist. Wasn't as strong as the one we had five/six years ago, which made the central heating system ring like a bell. It woke all the cats up though - they didn't like it at all!
posted by tabbycat at 3:02 AM on September 23, 2002

There's an artist in Seattle, WA who makes music from the data generated by earthquakes. I've listened to Ray Styles' huge multicolored hanging pipes chiming at the Science Museum of Minnesota. The music is both eerie and beautiful.
posted by ericableu at 3:02 AM on September 23, 2002

In Birmingham and immediately went online. The BBC news page was quite amusing when the story first got posted at around 01:40. Unfortunately it's since been updated but read something like "There has been an earthquake. There are no reported injuries. The UK sometimes has earthquakes."

As IRC was fairly quiet I picked a random msn chat room:
"there's been a bomb!!!!!!!!!"
"are we under attack????!!?!?"
"asl?"

*Sigh*.
The readout
posted by Kiell at 3:18 AM on September 23, 2002

an earthquake of magnitude four is equivalent to 1,000 tonnes of TNT - that in turn is equivalent to the power of a small nuclear weapon.

Ach. My sympathies to all you who felt this... I was once (as a child) in an 8.4 earthquake, and ever since that time any heavy truck rumbling by and shaking the building I'm in makes me deeply uneasy, and can even wake me from a sound sleep.
posted by taz at 3:25 AM on September 23, 2002

Felt it here in north London while sat reading emails. About four seconds of shaking, thought at first it might have been a bomb, but knew it was something odd.

All rather exciting really, so long as they stay that size, and at last, staying up late on the puter really pays off.
posted by ciderwoman at 3:27 AM on September 23, 2002

I was once (as a child) in an 8.4 earthquake

jeez, that must have been harrowing. The quake last night was just a tiddler, but made me realise what a strong one must be like - freakin scary. Whereabouts did your quake hit?
posted by derbs at 3:34 AM on September 23, 2002

This was Alaska, 1964. I was in Cordova. It happened on Good Friday, and my sister was born on Easter Sunday. the hospital was overflowing with casualties, and my Mother says that after my sister was delivered her room was filled with doctors and nurses who came to see the new baby, as, we suppose, a kind of break from the overwhelming stress of the suffering and death that they had been exposed to during that period.
posted by taz at 3:42 AM on September 23, 2002

We really felt it here as we are only about 30 miles from the epicentre.

Did anyone else notice this strange and freaky coincidence? Same date, same location, similar time, similar size... maybe there's a mass jumping off of a chair society in Birmingham that has it's AGM on the 23rd of September.
posted by DrDoberman at 3:52 AM on September 23, 2002

wow that is quite a weird coincidence...
posted by derbs at 3:55 AM on September 23, 2002

DrDoberman - I wonder who the chairman is for that society?
posted by taz at 4:14 AM on September 23, 2002

I was outside having a cig at the time. Came back inside, went upstairs and shut the bedroom door. Our lass said "Is there a cat in here? The bed just wobbled". There was no cat, and so I assumed it was a spring in the mattress or something.

Wasn't till I got up this morning and found an ICQ message off a friend who lives down the road that I realised what it was.
posted by robzster1977 at 4:20 AM on September 23, 2002

Same location?!? I was in Warwick yesterday & it certainly ain't Dud-loi!
posted by i_cola at 4:24 AM on September 23, 2002

I'm a bit further away from the epicentre, and I woke up to sleepily tell my wife to stop shaking the bed.

At least I hope that was the earthquake making it shake!
posted by muckybob at 4:47 AM on September 23, 2002

Epicentre in Wolverhampton, eh? That must be the sound of Sir Jack Heywood discovering how crap his football team is...

Annoyingly, I slept through it. I went to bed less than an hour earlier as well.
posted by salmacis at 4:52 AM on September 23, 2002

[00:57] <Ed\26H> was it just me or was there just a very minor earthquake?
[01:08] <toby\flat2> must have been you
posted by ed\26h at 5:14 AM on September 23, 2002

My mate Mark felt it in Crystal Palace, SE London, on second floor, whilst writing his diary.....
posted by terrymiles at 5:28 AM on September 23, 2002

(I reckon he's telling porky pies)
posted by gravelshoes at 6:34 AM on September 23, 2002

a friend of mine lives in manchester, he sent me a text asking me if i had felt the earthquake. and his text woke me up, but not the earthquake itself (i live about 100 miles away). it felt like a particularly bizzare part of a dream, to be honest.

tim saunders - sleeping through earthquakes since '75.
posted by triv at 7:06 AM on September 23, 2002

I was lying on the floor of my flat, watching 'The West Wing' with my partner, when I felt the tremors. We live close to the Tube, so I thought something had happened with a train. I said, "Hey! I think a train must have just derailed". He just looked at me, shaking his head, and said, "It was nothing. Relax".

You should have seen the grin on my face when we saw the paper this morning...
posted by yellowcandy at 2:17 PM on September 23, 2002

Slept right through it. However should anyone wish to send aid it would be most welcome!
posted by Fat Buddha at 2:21 PM on September 23, 2002

As a native Californian, I've been through several. The "rolling" ones are always scarier than the "shaking" ones and some how the aftershocks are worst of all (even though generally much gentler) because of being "shook-up" already. Every house I've lived in has major cracks running through patios, ceilings, and driveways.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 8:17 PM on September 23, 2002

It was just a mild rumble in Cardiff, but a woman [maurene] on sky news amused me the most saying it had lasted 3 minutes in Worksop, the anchor said "3 mins" Maurene replied "er......yeah, i think so!"
posted by bhell13 at 12:26 PM on September 24, 2002