Boom shake the room! | Paul Clarke's blog

Blog ≫ 2007 ≫ Boom shake the room!

Sat Apr 28

Well I suspect you've all been frantically refreshing wondering when I'd report from this morning's earthquake! Amazingly it was three and a half hours ago now, the power was off until just recently so there wasn't a lot I could do, no internets, and no mobile phone network. The landline was working but that was it. Nothing I could do... except, record a video message on the camera for later. Be good to document this, just in case it's the end of the world. Hi, I'm Kent Brockman:

That was after pulling some clothes on and before racing out of the house. The building was shaking, at about 8.15, and that's what woke us up. Very hard to believe that we didn't dream it at first, things like this just don't happen here. It only lasted about ten seconds, but it wsa still quite an experience. Next impression was that maybe a chimney had toppled, or maybe someone's boiler had blown up. I grabbed some rubbish valuables that I had to hand in my bag (IPOD, little computer, work laptop, what was I thinking?) and went outside where the neighbours were congregating. Nice to see and speak to so many of them, this never happens unless something's up.

General consensus was it was an earthquake, I have to say no-one here really thought it was a proper nucular bomb type explosion or terror attack. We have some cracks in the wall, mirror and pictures shaken free, and cupboard doors popped open and a neighbour had similar. We went back in the house, got more properly dressed, made a couple of phone calls. Still nothing on the national news at this point, though a few minutes later my sister called to say it was breaking news on Sky, and I should phone in. Instead, we headed downtown, expection scenes of devastation.

Town was quite busy, mostly with people who should have been in the shops and banks and things all evacuated onto the high street. Most places were closed, but a few market stalls were doing a roaring trade in tea and bacon sandwiches and the like. Django's cafe was open, though only doing cold drinks I think. A fair proportion of it's customers were drinking beer, at about a quarter to ten. Probably medicinal. This burger van had a queue right up the street:

[flickr]http://farm1.static.flickr.com/198/475436639_adbfa1fdab.jpg[/flickr]

OK, it's not just the East side of Folkestone that can look a bit rough in a certain light, the town centre is nothing to write home about either. Apart from that though, it's lovely.

TV and radio reports say it was a gas mark 4.7 on the richter scale, which might seem a bit feeble to any international viewers, but it's quite something for here. There's naturally been some overexcitement among those who've phoned the local radio station, one woman said she lives near the channel tunnel and she DEFINITELY heard a big explosion, hmm. TV news reports are a bit annoying really. Luckily only one person's been injured in all of this, but all of the damage seems to be over the east side of town. I'm not saying this is the worst part of town or anything like that, but all the teenagers with prams and baseball caps that you see gurning in the background of the news reports are not representative of the town as a whole, honest. Here's a nice house across the street that seems to have taken a bad hit. Click on the photo to zoom in to the cracks:

[flickr]http://farm1.static.flickr.com/216/475437167_bcf3a0dfd6.jpg[/flickr]

Luckily the power is back on, so just popped back in to post this, and then we're heading out of town to somewhere the businesses are not disrupted, so we can get some lunch and that.

Bit of excitement eh? This distracted me from my cold that's been building up all week, but now I'm relaxed again it's creeping back, bah.

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💬 Woo