Monday, January 25, 2010

Full volcanic experience!

My first thought when I woke up this morning was that the subway, here in Port Vila, is pretty intense. It took me maybe 20 seconds to realize that the shaking was from an earthquake! Such an absurd feeling that I was not even thinking that there is no subway (or any rail-tracks) of any kind here :).

Anyway, quite impressive stuff... people just kinda came out of their homes and waited, but no one was really scared. 10 minutes later, again... this time slightly weaker. They lasted for a long time, I never experienced anything like this. Maybe around 30-40 seconds each of them.

Seems like it was between 5.4 and 5.8, the first one, according to different reports and the other one around 4.8 (on Richter scale).

So the explanation I got was that the volcano in the island of Ambrym was messing around, but nothing serious and no need to evacuate populations. The epicenter was around 100 km from Port Vila, where we are now.

Well, I guess that is what you get when you come to a place which is basically a bunch of volcanoes :)

The sensation though, really unforgettable... everything just shaking... hard enough to wake me up, which is not really an east feat!

3 comments:

  1. What earthquake?...my wife and I sleeped through it and we live in Port Vila.

    We are only made aware of earthquakes from our Google Allerts a day or two after the fact. 95% of earthquakes & tremors are not noticed by the local population (or we are just not concerned.

    Anyway if you want to see 5,000 images of this amazing place see: http://picasaweb.google.com/vanuatutravel

    Remember Port Vila is only a very small part of Vanuatu and the not the most interesting one, come and see Tanna, Santo, and all those other incredible islands!

    Tropical regards,
    John and Silvana Nicholls

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  2. Hej!
    Nice seeing someone other than my friends reading this! :)
    We're heading to the Banks on Friday, and we'll stay in Ra island for a couple of weeks, so looking forward to that. On the way back we'll try to stop at Santo for a couple of days. We hope to get the chance to go to Tanna as well, although the flight costs are pretty expensive, and the boats don't seem like such a nice option... or maybe you have a different opinion?
    As for the earthquake you must have a pretty heavy sleep! Everyone we spoke to noticed it (some were already awake, not my case :)).
    Thank you for reading, maybe we'll meet around here sometime (kind of hard not to :)).
    Lukium yu!
    Pedro

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  3. Run to the sea!!!
    Lava Bubble Bath is great for the skin!!!

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