Thursday, May 28, 2009

el terremoto

Word of the Day Thursday:
Terremoto = Earthquake!

(say tEHrrrrrEH-mOH-tOH)
At 2:24 AM this morning (3:24 AM KY time) there was an earthquake off of the northern shore of Honduras. It registered 7.1 on the Richter scale.


(picture courtesy of usgs.gov)

In some places I've read/heard that there was 1 death, and in others, that there were 4. I still don't know the exact number. There are some damaged highways, and I heard a bridge collapsed somewhere in the north. From what I've read on Honduras Living, it seems like the people that live on the islands felt it the most.

I live in Tegucigalpa, which as you can see on the map, is pretty far from the epicenter. Jose and I are okay...we slept through it, I guess. We didn't even know there had been an earthquake until we saw it on the news this morning as we were getting ready for work. I vaguely remember hearing Charlie bark in the middle of the night, so maybe he felt it. And I'm so jealous if he did. I survived my first earthquake and don't have any exciting stories to share because I slept through the darn thing. ;)

7 comments:

Alejandra said...

Trust me, it´s better that way! It was horrible, I jumped out of the bed and ran to my brothers´room... They sleep in bunk beds, so I needed to check out if no one had been crushed or something like that... And after that I couldn´t fall asleep until 4 am...

Cindy in California said...

As a Californian, I've experienced all the earthquakes I ever want to experience. The ABSOLUTE WORST is having them hit in the middle of the night. That's happened to me twice with pretty major ones and a few smaller ones.

You may want to experience one, but it's "better" if you are at least awake and somewhat coherant. Plus, it's pretty hard to get back to sleep after the adreline rush.

I'm glad you're OK. I'm headed to Tegus in a week so hopefully there won't be any earth movement while I'm there. :-)

Alik Ibe said...

Hallo....
Nice blog.... I like.......

Trish said...

Hi Hannah - I just wrote up our earthquake experience here in Gracias Lempira in my blog. I agree with Cindy about having quakes in the middle of the night. We experienced several small quakes during the years we lived on Guanaja, but they were all in the daytime, and much less scary!

Jane and Douglas said...

Glad to hear you & yours are okay. When we heard of the quakes on the morning news here in Canada, I immediately thought of you - & to think you actually had three quakes all in one day to experience!

La Gringa said...

The count is now 5 quakes, which I've written incessantly about since my internet connection came back.

It was exciting, but the worry about damage to house was stronger than the desire for more excitement. Apparently I've slept through 2 of the 5. The first one would have been hard to sleep through in Ceiba.

Hannah said...

Thanks for all the comments. I'm sure it was scary...but I'm STILL jealous that I didn't feel it! ;)

And now to know that there have been 5...and I haven't felt a single one...I'm even more jealous! hehe