Guria

A guria shook my house last night. I awoke alert, attentive, bizarrely, in the middle of the night and then the house started shaking. The strange thing was that I awoke 10 seconds before it struck. Do I have a sixth sense?

It was the talk of the town this morning. 6.0 on the Richter scale - "it was only 50km away at Nadzab", "I was ready to dive into the triangle on life". I became wide awake for some strange reason. Then the earthquake started and I was waiting to hear the cracking and crashing from the roof, walls or whatever. Thankfully they didn't come.

It seems everyone other than me was worried. Maybe because I haven't been in a major earthquake before. I was just riding through the 10 seconds of violent shaking at 12:50am and pondered if it was going to get any worse. It was bad but obviously not as bad for me as others. My fridge didn't pop open, items did not topple over, and cat did not run away.

I know I live in a geophysicically dangerous place. Right on top of a major fault line. The crushing Australian/Indian plate bumping into the tiny Bizmarck plate, which in turn is being jostled by massive Pacific plate. But until last night it had all been rather minor gurias. Now I know what to expect.