On Wednesday June 23rd at 1.45pm I was sitting on the couch in the living room watching Food Network Challenge on TV when I felt the couch shaking. No, my phone wasn't vibrating. No, the ladies on the third floor are not stomping again. No, a big truck didn't pass by. I immediately thought: "No way! Earthquakes in Toronto? That's impossible!" My housemate felt it, my friend who lives like two streets away felt it. Then I went on facebook and my homepage was flooded with statuses about the earthquake. Yes, it was the Toronto's 5.0 magnitude earthquake that originated by the border of Quebec and Ontario. Apparently, according to
this website (me having studied Geography in high school and I was interested in the cause of this earthquake), it was due to "ancient geologic stresses" from glaciers - kinda like pressing a sponge and the sponge slowly pops up. Another reason was due to "ancient failed rift located in the region" by Ottawa Valley, where the northeast and southwest sides were moving away from each other 150 million years ago and this causes weak zones today that are the cause of little shakes. And since Ontario is quite flat, vibration waves are sent hundreds kilometers away...to the United States.
For a lot of my friends it was their first well-felt earthquake ever in their lives. For me, coming from Costa Rica, it isn't a big deal. It was more of a surprise for me that there were earthquakes in Toronto. (SIDE NOTE: couple years ago when my uncle tried to convince me to stay in Canada, he was telling me that, unlike Costa Rica, Canada never gets any earthquakes....lol riiight!). I told my dad about the earthquake and he answers me "5.5?? that's like nothing. We have those here everyday, several times."
People have theories that it has to do with Quebec trying to separate from the rest of Canada. Others believe that this is the day of doom because we had rainstorms, earthquakes, tornadoes....maybe have something to do with 2012? Oh silly conspiracies.
Now with that earthquake, there's going to be massive amounts of jokes, t-shirts, buttons, comics, videos making fun of it, etc. It's part of pop culture now....at least in Ontario.
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Was a pretty interesting feeling... my first taste of what (very mild, by then time it reached us) an earthquake felt like - but definitely noticeable. At first I thought it was a heavy truck passing through or construction, but unlike those, it was a very consitent shake and immediately I thought, "I wonder if it's an earthquake... but in Ontario, really?"
ReplyDeleteIt was until I refreshed Facebook (lol) that I saw immediate reports of it, haha. Guess my assumption was true, it was an earthquake, but I really didn't need half-a-news-feed full of it to validate my claims :P
facebook is the closest thing i have to hear about accurate news.
ReplyDeleteReally, you don't have cable in your place or anything? =O radio?!!
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