Earthquake

Here I sit at about 12:23 am on 22-Feb-2007. I just happened onto the New Zealand Herald website where it is reported that Auckland experienced several earthquakes this evening -- measuring as much as 4.5 on the Richter Scale.

I guess Mindy and I missed it. I don't remember anything out of the ordinary in the evening and certainly nothing that I would consider a techtonic event. A dish did slide off the counter and break on the floor earlier this evening at time that would coincide with SOME of the reports, but we attributed it more to our precariously stacked draining rack than to outside forces.

Amazingly, there has been no coverage of this on TV -- still hasn't, I just looked. Back in Abilene, if there is even the potential for a natural disaster, the networks bombard you with repeated information like some modern twist on Chinese water torture. Here, nothing. I hope there is nothing that I need to be doing.

There is a series of commercials from the Ministry of Disaster Preparedness, or some such governmental agency, in which a menacing looking bloak keeps promising that he will tell us what "[we] need to keep [us] and [our] family safe," but he has not done so yet. To think that the big moment almost came and went without the Ministry of the Getting Together of Things Necessary for Safety and Welfare in the Face of Impending Doom, or some such governmental agency, playing THE last commercial in the series where Deadly-Serious Guy finally makes good on his promise to prepare us for the quasi-End.

I just went to the website for the Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management (the correct name). It doesn't even list the earthquake as having occurred. So much for lightning-fast emergency response, seamless coordination of agencies, and rapid dissemination of information.