At 3.39 am this morning we jumped out of bed screaming. As the children came running into our bedroom we instinctively knew that we had just experienced our first ever earthquake. It was scary! It's not uncommon for this area to have minor tremors but this was certainly above average!
The bed shook and it was over in less than a second. The noise was a loud, deep rumble, like many lorries driving through the house or someone using a power drill with hammer action.
This morning I checked the
website and confirmed that it was indeed a tremor that could be felt within a 100 km radius. When we put on the news, we discovered that they have pinpointed the epicenter to the town of Steinen. Heard of it before? It's the town 7 miles from here where we go to church and where God has been really blessing recently. Maybe I should have titled this post "Church causes seismic waves in Steinen" :) Steinen actually is the German word for 'stones'. Well the stones were certainly moving this morning!
At this time, no damage has been reported. We are thankful that it wasn't worse. In
1356 a huge earthquake destroyed the nearby city of Basel.
Listening to the reports coming in, most local people here were woken by the quake, but simply turned over and went to sleep again. Everyone is talking about it but they don't appear to be overly concerned. The authorities have said that aftershocks can not be ruled out.
