Tuesday 28th September 2021 7:47 a.m.
My first experience of an earthquake.
I was already awake when the hotel bed unexpectedly started moving. It felt as though an invisible someone was at the end of the bed pushing it back and forth. Woken up by the tremors, my husband suddenly sat bolt upright in bed, wide-eyed and confused.
We looked at each other and a wry smile immediately came over my face as my first thought was that perhaps the couple in the next door room were having an early morning shag! (We were staying in a nice beachside hotel but it did have rather thin walls.) However I then realised there was absolutely no sound: no heavy breathing not even a grunt or two and no bed frame squeaks. In fact, there was nothing but an unusual silence. Almost instantly, I became aware of the eerie quiet that hung in the air. Finally the penny dropped; it was another earthquake.
24 hours earlier, as we had woven our way along the Cretan coastal road to Rethymon and then headed through the mountains to the south of the island, we were oblivious of the earthquake (measured at 6.3 on the Richter Scale) that had occurred whilst we were on route. We had felt nothing and we only discovered news of this first earthquake later in the day when we had arrived at our destination, the coastal town of Mátala.
At the time we casually brushed off the idea of an earthquake; we hadn’t felt it, we saw no evidence of it, so we didn’t worry. However later when we saw a BBC news report, it became apparent that it was more serious than we thought. A frantic phone call with one relative, who had seen the news from the UK, enhanced our concern as we considered the severity of our location which was just 40 miles from the epicentre.
It was with these thoughts that we woke up in our hotel room to the second quake – this one we felt – which was measured at a magnitude of 5.3. To die-hard experienced earthquakers, perhaps they would have just relaxed in their room, lay on the beach, taken a dip in the pool or enjoyed a beer in the beachside bar, but to us earthquake novices, we felt a deep sense of unease that morning. We decided to leave. We abandoned our planned sightseeing which would have taken us closer to the epicentre, and agreed to head back to our dwelling on the north of the island further away from any earthquake movement.
Decision made, we soon sprang into action. Never have I showered so quickly, nor packed up my things so efficiently and never, never ever have I eaten so little in a hotel buffet breakfast. It seemed scandalous to depart so swiftly without taking advantage of the abundance of croissants, Greek yoghurt with honey, toast, cheese, eggs, rolls, bottomless orange juice and coffee, but sometimes you have to weigh up the odds and make a sensible decision. Earthquake versus big breakfast? Or to be more dramatic: life versus calories? In less than half an hour, we had fled the area.
In the days that followed, where little if any earthquake movement was detected or reported, we pondered on our decision to up and leave so quickly. Upon reflection, perhaps we could have continued our sightseeing and perhaps we overreacted by departing so suddenly but hindsight is always a wonderful thing. At the time, it was a scary moment of the unknown and I shall not forget how I felt at the silence of the tremors.
To end on a more lighthearted note, a return trip is planned and I look forward to finishing my hotel buffet breakfast!
Let Luce! 