Shaken, but not stirred

Yesterday we experienced another earthquake. It was, apparently deep in the seabed to the southeast of us, off the island of Kithira. It was quite severe, with a reported magnitude of 6.8, but being about 125km away and with the Taygetos Mountains between us most of the force was absorbed when it reached us.

We were just getting ready to go out for a walk when we felt it. There was a slight rumbling noise, then we felt the house wobble slightly and loose objects in the room started vibrating. It lasted about 30 seconds and thankfully felt quite gentle. From the TV reports it looks like the old buildings on the island of Kithira, which was closest to the quake, took quite a bit of damage.

Last night I think it was the reporter from TV station Alter, on the scene in Kithira, who nearly had us screaming. His live report involved scrambling round a church that had sustained a lot of damage to its twin towers. Both were cracked wide open and huge chunks of masonry lay on the ground. He kept running over these and standing under the towers. Hadn't he ever heard of aftershocks?

The church is high on a hill, one side of the square around it was on a cliff edge and a huge part of that had broken away and fallen. So what does he do? He charges over to this in the dark with the cameraman and lighting trying to follow to show us this broken edge and the sheer drop. Not content with just showing the damage he stands right on this broken edge and starts kicking bits that look as though they are loose. I was sure it was going to turn into one of those clips shown on disaster programs!

Anyway, for us here it was 'shaken, but not stirred'.