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Monday, May 16, 2011

Earthquake in Lorca

Thursday morning this past week I was up early, and after my customary wake-up exercise of transcribing a few dishes for the New York Public Library's What's on the Menu? project, I went to read email. And that's how I found out that the previous afternoon, there had been two earthquakes just about 100 kilometers (60 miles) from us. I hadn't felt a thing.

The first terramoto--just a "tremor" of 4.4 on the Richter scale--came a little before 5:00 PM local time, but it was the second, at 6:45 PM, at 5.2 magnitude, that did the terrible damage. Lorca is an old city. Buildings and cars were destroyed, the church lost its bell tower, ten people were at first declared dead (since confirmed to eight), and hundreds were injured, some quite seriously. The population is about 100,000 and I read one report that said that one-third of Lorca's inhabitants spent the night outside their homes. Nearly 80% of the buildings in town are now said to be damaged in some way.

On Wednesday afternoon I was calmly working in my office, and then I got dressed for dinner and we departed to spend the evening with friends at a birthday celebration. That was festive and undisturbed with any mention of the nearby disaster, and lasted long enough so I went to bed when we returned home, without checking email or accessing news.

So at 6:00 the next morning, I was surprised to find three messages--all from the United States--inquiring about my whereabouts and whether we were affected. I had to go looking for the news. But the only way we have been affected is the strange feeling that this particular disaster was uncommonly close. During the time that we traveled frequently between Roquetas and our home here near Torrevieja, we drove by (not through) the city of Lorca often. It is sad to see the pictures of the devastation in the news.

Over the past days, more inquiries and expressions of concern have come in. Thank you for them; it is nice to be remembered. And we are lucky.

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