12th May: Too Close for Comfort.

Yesterday evening an earthquake struck Lorca, which is less than 30 miles from the campsite here. This extract from a news report gives the details.

5.1 quake kills 10, topples buildings in Spain
By Jorge Guerrero (AFP) – 3 hours ago

LORCA, Spain — A magnitude 5.1 quake killed at least 10 people in southern Spain on Wednesday, sending buildings crashing down as panicked residents fled for their lives.

Ten people perished in the deadliest tremor in Spain in more than five decades, officials said.

The quake collapsed fronts of buildings in the southeastern town of Lorca and ripped huge gaps into walls, which slumped into the streets.
Witnesses reported many injuries.

A church clocktower smashed to the ground and narrowly missed one television reporter as he conducted an interview in the town on Spanish public broadcaster TVE. A bronze bell lay in the rubble.

Television images showed shaken families and children gathering in squares and playgrounds in the town, some weeping and hugging as they sought safety. Masonry and rubble blanketed streets. A corpse lay in the street covered in a rescue blanket.

A line of parked cars lay crushed under tonnes of rubble, photos published in the online edition of El Mundo showed.

The tremor struck at 6:47 pm (1647 GMT) with a depth of 10 kilometres (six miles) and could be felt as far away as the capital Madrid. It hit nearly two hours after a smaller 4.4-magnitude quake.

The strange thing is that we felt nothing at all. At 6.47pm we were in some friends’ caravan drinking tea. It was windy and caravans always move a bit in the wind so maybe that’s why we didn’t notice any tremor. The friends whose caravan we were in at the time have pals who were in a static caravan close to Lorca. Their caravan rocked from side to side and all the pictures fell off the wall, but they themselves weren’t hurt.

It’s a sobering thought when such a disaster happens so close at hand as to how randomly and unexpectedly these events occur, and to be very grateful that the finger of fate wasn’t pointing at YOU this time.