I dreamt the earth moved....

(photo from ABC news)

The toll of dead and injured from yesterday's Peruvian earthquake is mounting. At the last count at least 500 people were killed and over 1,500 injured. The 7.9 quake struck yesterday evening at 6:40 pm local time. Tens of thousands of Peruvians fled their homes when the quake struck and many of them have no homes to which they can return.

Here's information on how to help.


(photo from ABC news)

Do you remember the 6.8 earthquake that struck near Olympia on February 28, 2001? I was sitting in my office on the third floor of the Edward R. Murrow Center at Washington State University when the quake struck over 300 miles away. A long shudder went through the entire building. Immediately co-workers collected in the halls and, as I recall, there seemed to be consensus on the fact that we had just experienced some kind of earthquake. Northwest Public Radio aired breaking news on the earthquake and then pictures began to appear on television broadcasts.


(photo from Jim Lehrer Newshour)

The morning of 2/28/01 I dreamt of being in a major earthquake. I remember mentioning it to a co-worker that morning before the actual quake struck. The reason why I felt compelled to tell someone is because I'd dreamt of being in a smaller earthquake on March 12th of 1999. That morning a smaller earthquake struck southwest of Spokane. Believe me, I'm not saying that I can predict earthquakes but those dreams were unsettling (pun intended) enough that I realized, Monday night, that I had been subconsciously expecting an earthquake all day. I think that this speaks more to the power of the mind and imagination than anything else. Still, I find the stories fascinating about animals that seem to sense and even flee an area before major earthquakes.

So setting my prescient powers aside for the moment, I became curious about the amount of seismic activity that occurs in the Pacific Northwest and did some Internet exploring. In the last two days 11 earthquakes have been recorded in our region. None of them were more than a level 2 in magnitude.

Further exploration of one site led me to a page entitled For Summary of U.S. Earthquakes. Check it out! I was expecting a map of the U.S. Instead the link is to a map of the world. I've heard many times that the Pacific Rim is one of the hot spots (again pun intended) of volcanic activity and it's interesting to look at us compared to the rest of the world.