New Zealand Rock-N-Roll Leaves Me Quaking In My Boots.

The joke is on us now. Not ha-ha as in Jim Gaffigan’s “eat fresh” routine, but ironic ha-ha. New Zealand Rock-N-Roll leaves me quaking in my boots. Not the rock and roll played live in pubs and at the theatre (the ABBA tribute band was great fun!). But the kind that causes the whole south island to shift in the wee hours of the morning.

Every place has its potential for earthly disaster. Whether it be wildfires, hurricanes or earthquakes (to name a few), you can’t escape that dark looming cloud that can change your world in a heartbeat. When you are a newcomer, that potential is extra scary. I remember a friend from California who was terrified whenever a tornado “watch” was issued in Iowa City. Of course, those of us who grew up with the threat of twisters hardly paid attention until a funnel cloud was actually spotted; then, to her horror, we all ran outside, hoping to glimpse a tornado emerging from the blackened sky.

She grew up with earthquakes, not tornadoes.

We grew up with tornadoes, not earthquakes.

We are now our friend.

It was a dark, yet calm, night.

And I was awake. Which wasn’t unusual and was a prodrome to one of the many nocturnal hot flashes I had every night. As I lay there waiting to turn into a living, breathing sauna,

there came a loud thud (or was it more of a clap or a bang?)

then a rumble, rumble, rumble,

and the wall shook in time with the sound.

Lastly, stillness and silence.

(Pretty good rhythm, if truth be told.)

I guess nobody has car alarms because the silence was deafening.

I said aloud, hearing my husband stir,

What was THAT?!?

I knew, but I wanted to hear him say it.

That was an EARTHQUAKE!!!

He didn’t have to be so freaking thrilled about it, did he?

I ruminated over whether to check on the kids and decided against it because I didn’t want things to go something like this:

Hey, did you feel that earthquake? Oh, well, everything’s ok now, so GO BACK TO SLEEP.

Because I sure couldn’t.

Not a one-off occurrence.

Turns out this tremor with a shaky beat measured 4.7 on the Richter scale and was practically in our backyard, only 10 km (6.2 miles) northeast and 5 km (3.1 miles) deep. There was a time I could run farther than that, so of course, I was a little rattled.

Pun totally intended.

It also turns out that nearly 15,000 shimmies and shakes occur in New Zealand every year. Yes, you read that correctly, THREE ZEROS. But only (only!) one percent or so are ever felt. The math there does not suggest “only” to me… (One tremor felt an average of every other day…)

Of course, those tremors detected by humans are subjective. And depend on location, location, location. One of my kids slept right on through that 4.7 jolt (he could sleep through a fire alarm, so I’m not sure he’s a good example), but people 140 miles away felt it. There have been two more tremors since: my husband felt one, and the other my oldest noticed. I was in the room with him when he perked up and blurted out, “What was that?!?” I didn’t feel a thing.

Correction, I did feel something. I was quaking in my boots.

A Midwest girl transitions from tornadoes to fault lines.

Is The Big One coming? Are these tremors the TIA’s of the earthquake world? I’ve been reassured we are pretty safe here on the coast. Our home has been around since the 1960s, so I’m not too concerned about the walls caving in. On the other hand, earthquake experts…in my book, anyone who is a native kiwi and has lived through the Christchurch quakes…say that standing in a doorway for safety is full-on “rubbish.”

Oh. OK. So what are we supposed to do in case of an earthquake?

According to New Zealand civil defence and The NZ Society for Earthquake Engineering, the best action to take in case the earth comes alive is to drop (to the floor), cover (your head), and hold on (to something sturdy):

Doorways are not mentioned. Neither is running outside into the open (Who came up with that one, anyway?) Likely because not all buildings are retrofitted to withstand earthquakes, and that old doorway may not be a safe place to shelter.

So that’s the plan: drop, cover and hold. No doorways. No going outside to “check it out” (like crazy midwesterners during tornado season) to escape a collapsing roof (not that something else couldn’t crush you while standing in the street). It’s still scary, though. Not that tornadoes aren’t. Tornadoes have been known to wipe towns off the map without warning, like the one that devastated Parkersburg, Iowa. I’m just used to the possibility of those and accept the risk.

And there is a season and a circumstance for tornadoes.

But earthquakes can happen at any time, without warning.

That scares the crap out of me.

The MO: be a Boy Scout

So we are prepared, as we have through the possibility of other natural disasters, with a stash of water and food and batteries and first aid, and know what to do in case the earth gets restless.

There’s no more we can do. Peace of mind comes in that we are as ready as we can be. No place on earth is safe from the unpredictability of earth, wind and fire. Every locale has its “thing.” And the thing here is earthquakes.

Or, if you ask certain people here, lightning. Read this article about a local man whose car was struck by lightning…while he was driving it.