A shocking day in northern Italy

[jim_mex]

This morning I was awoken at just before 1 am to the sensation of being rocked in my sleep. Nope, definitely not Norma by my side pushing for more bed space. She's back in Mexico enjoying a full bedspace to herself! A few seconds later a smooth tremble shook me again. Another 10 mins with no more disturbances and I was back in the land of nod and dead to the world until the alarm clock sounded at 6:00 am

Curious at what woke me, before leaving home for work I logged on to one of these 'recent earthquakes' web sites and sure enough, we were hit by a small magnitude tremor with its epicenter a few miles north of me. Only 4.1 strength but at around a shallow 4 miles deep, shallow enough to be felt. When I arrived to the factory at around 8:00 am everyone was talking about being rudely awakened.

An hour later, with all the fuss practically died down, we suddenly felt another jolt strong enough to rattle the cups and saucers, and the ladies, in our decorating department. Ten mins later we heard that this new tremor was around 5.2 magnitude, again shallow, but located this time around 80 miles to the south of us close to the city of Parma.

Although both tremors were fairly weak and didn't cause any damage several of the local town councils decided not to take risks and evacuated the schools and quite a few public offices plus a large shopping mall nearby. The main line Venice - Milan electric train service running close to our factory was also suspended several hours whilst any possible movement to rail lines was assessed.

A quick extrapolation by yours truly showed our factory location to be pretty much on a line linking the two epicentres so armed with this information and just for fun I stuck my head in our purchasing office to wind up the lady who deals with my travel arrangements by asking if she could change my flight dates back to Mexico to this weekend instead of at the end of April so I could get out before the country falls apart at the seams! Needless to say, my request was refused but we did have a good laugh.

Walking away and back to work I couldn't help but wonder if those pesky ancient Mayans were organizing a trial run before the end of the year comes around...... Food for thought?

[JimSawyer]

Sorry Jim,
That was me. I have a new girlfriend....lol.
She really rocked my world...hehehe

I guess that's just the muses giving you something else to spin your tales...

[Jan]

Good try on the return flight. Just hang on tight and don't fall off the earth.

Jan

[sawdustus]

Read about those but I thought it was just Italy trying to shake itself out of its financial troubles. Glad you're ok.

george

[Wood Dog]

Well glad you are fine, would scare the cr@$ out of me.

[Hawaiilad]

You guys are so bad Jim, when living in California for lots of years, I also "felt" those darn earthquakes...lost part of a house when one of those hit...bounced out of bed a couple times as well. Hang in there and ride it out Jim.

[jim_mex]

Yippee it's 5:00 pm Friday!

Another tremor this afternoon of 5.3 and again close to Parma.
Three in three days and each one stronger than the previous.
I think I may need to have a couple of shots of my favourite malt this weekend to steady the nerves - at least this will be my excuse!
Cheers!

[Catlyn]

Originally Posted by jim_mex

Walking away and back to work I couldn't help but wonder if those pesky ancient Mayans were organizing a trial run before the end of the year comes around...... Food for thought?

No, I don't believe it.........I think they just didn't know how to keep their calendar going after 2012. We'll still be here....but if we're not it won't be because the Mayan calendar has run out.

[treslakter]

A small and quiet birthday party for my mother on Friday, but I don't think that caused the tremor! - Now I'm back to my own house, and that will be my excuse

[Magic]

Congratulations Jim. You've joined the Shaky City club! Since our four big ones since last September [in Christchurch, NZ] we are rapidly closing in on our 10-thousanth aftershock and over 3-thousand of 3.0 and above. Don't panic, you get used to them. If you wake up and don't hear anything hitting the floor don't worry, roll over and go back to sleep. Demolition started yesterday on 5,000 trashed residences and we are on the last 300 - 400 buildings in the CBD to come down. We have our own earthquake scale. Under 3.5 don't matter; 4.0 - 4.5 you get your coffee automatically stirred; 4.5 - 5.0 gets your attention; 5.0 - 6.0 getting serious; 6.0-7.0 and above sh*t its an earthquake. Cheers, Magic