Good morning. Last night as we slept soundly in our beds, people on the other side of the globe were jolted from their day with the words “Earthquake!” A 6.3 shaker struck Christchurch, New Zealand, sending people clamoring into the streets in search of safety. Numbers of people buried under rubble are still unknown and families cry out for their lost ones. Unbeknownst to me, Amazon Sage was already on the job at the first ominous sound of the earth’s parting. There, she gathered with friends of friends, offering comfort in the bedlam, causing my sweet dream of fluff to vanish in an instant.
It’s an amazing thing to witness an earthquake, even a tiny one. I know, having lived on the west coast of the USA for a number of years. Once while in Washington State, I was sitting on the bed talking with a friend when it began to wiggle. It was as if someone were purposefully shaking it and that is exactly what I thought. Gently, I chastised the person sitting next to me. However, when I turned and saw her expression of shock, I knew then, “We’re in an earthquake!” In that moment, one would hope that our first reaction would be to follow the instructions we have so often heard; get outside or at least in a doorway. In truth, it took almost a minute before the surprise lifted enough for us to take action.
Another time, in another place, I awoke to rough room vibrations and was nervous until I realized it was only the washing machine doing it’s vibratory dance with someone’s uneven load of clothes. I chuckled the next morning as I shared the “fake earthquake” with my housemates. Funny thing is, they weren’t laughing. It seems we had no washing machine in the house. There have always been natural disasters and to the extent we are able, people try to prepare for them.Way back in the 1950s, school kids even practiced “duck and cover” when the threat of a nuclear attack was a grave possibility. In Kansas, kids were taught to go down into a cellar to avoid the destructive path of a tornado, while in Florida, kids learned to remove fly-away items from their yard in advance of a hurricane.
So here’s today’s question: “In your own life, what do you need to prepare for in the event of an emergency?”
