Un tremblement de terre au Québec

Petite nouvelle québécoise que je voulais commenter: il y a quelques jours, un tremblement de terre de 4.5 a secoué le Québec dans la nuit. L'épicentre était à Pierreville, mais on l'a ressenti à Montréal. Je dis ça, et je n'en ai pas eu connaissance: je dormais. Mais ça a réveillé ma femme, qui s'est demandé ce qui se passait. Quand même, 4.5, c'est une bonne secousse. Bien entendu, ça m'a rappelé mes propres souvenirs. lesquels étaient plus impressionnants.

Le séisme de 1988 du Saguenay

Mon frère PJ m'a rappelé que le 25 novembre, c'était l'anniversaire du tremblement de terre de 1988 au Saguenay. J'avais bêtement oublié de le souligner. Qu'à cela ne tienne, c'est samedi, comme le lendemain de cette journée-là, enfin cette nuit-là quand ça s'est produit, il y a maintenant 33 ans. Je présente donc le bulletin de nouvelles de Radio-Can de l'époque pour en souligner l'anniversaire:

Séisme de 4,0

Voici une petite nouvelle sismologique qui a attiré mon attention hier: un séisme de magnitude 4,0 dont l'épicentre était à Joliette a secoué la région métropolitaine. Un tremblement de terre, même modeste, c'est toujours digne de mention, mais je dois dire que j'ai connu bien pire. Tout de même, c'est digne de mention: la terre à tremblé dans la région de Montréal.

The 1988 Saguenay earthquake

My father reminded me today that it was the anniversary of the 1988 Saguenay earthquake. One of the few, but unfortunately not the last, natural catastrophe I lived. I had just got in my pjs after my shower when it happened. My father had just finished reading a newspaper article about blackouts and... earthquakes. Then there was that huge tremor and total blackout. I was shocked, but I did not have time to be scared.

Ancient Earthquake Detector

Here is another treasure I saw during my last visit to the Natural History Museum. It it is an ancient... seismomether. An earthquake detector. It is from China, and is maybe the earliest thing we had to identify earthquake. Basically, it is a vase made of bronze with dragon's heads carved in it and surrounded by toads. Each dragon's head was holding a bronze ball. When an earthquake was coming, one of the heads would let the ball drop, indicating where the earthquake was coming from. Simple and elegant. And since people thought at the time that earthquakes were supernatural phenomenons, I find it fitting that the Chinese used a dragon to indicate their coming. Old myths meeting scientific and technological progress. The NHM has many attractions, this one is lesser known, but it is one that I particularly loved. It is a artifact of early human creativity and curiosity.

Quand la terre tremble

Ainsi donc, Montréal ne serait pas à l'abri d'un tremblement de terre. Le tremblement de terre japonais m'a laissé pensif ces derniers temps et m'a rappelé des souvenirs. Ca arrrive parfois que j'ai des réminiscences de cette soirée de novembre 1988 au Saguenay. Je me demande un peu comment on réagirait au Québec si ça arrivait. Quand j'ai vécu le tremblement de terre de 1988, je n'ai pas eu peur. Ni pendant ni après. Ce ne fut même pas un moment désagréable. Un moment mémorable, forcément, mais ce n'est pas comme si la panne d'électricité qui a suivi était vraiment quelque chose d'inusité (et les pannes d'électricité ont leur charme). Dans le fond, c'était un évènement assez anecdotique. Mais si une secousse sismique faisait de véritables dommages, ce serait une autre paire de manches.

Tremor in the East

I blog about earthquakes from time to time: when Haïti got hit, when Italy got hit and now, well, Japan got it too. With a tsunami on top of that. I do not have the same proximity with Japan as I have with Haïti and Italy, far from it. If it was China, even, that would be different. Still, I do have Japanese colleagues, nice, friendly people, so this tragedy did touch directly people I know, people I like. Thankfully they are okay. I have been through an earthquake myself, a major one yet nothing of the proportion they had there, so my heart goes out to them. I still remember it, the plates shaking in the cupboards, the power cuts, but above all the tremor. Something like a quiet, steady, deep growl. I blogged before about such forces of nature. But whatever the shape it takes, flood or volcanic eruption or what have you, I always imagine them as a sound, this deep, terrifying growl.

Haïti

English below, in the usual rewritten form...

Je ne l'apprendrai à personne: Haïti a subi un épouvantable tremblement de terre. Les commentaires que je peux faire sont un peu vains, forcément, vu l'ampleur de la catastrophe, absurde dans l'intensité de sa violence. Je n'ai jamais mis les pieds à Haïti. Cela dit, j'ai lu un peu sur son histoire et La tragédie du roi Christophe d'Aimé Césaire (de la voisine Martinique), lue à l'université, a fait une impression durable sur moi. Mais surtout, j'ai un peu de famille originaire d'Haïti, lesquels ont encore de la famille et des amis là-bas, alors la présente catastrophe me touche par ricochet. Je vais dire un cliché, mais nous vivons sur une bien petite planète.
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This is the kind of news that remind me that we live on a small planet and I hope to avoid clichés after this one. I will not break the news for anybody, but here it is anyway: Haiti has been caught in an earthquake. After what happened to the island in the last...centuries, this catastrophe can be qualified by nothing else than absurd so meaningless it is in its blind violence. I have never been to Haiti, but I read about its history and, more importantly, I have a bit of family that is from there, who themselves have friends and family still living in the island. Therefore, the current tragedy touches me by proxy. No man is an island, and so on... Whatever you look at it, it still sucks.

Italy on my mind

Well, I thought about blogging about Lent, Jesus of Nazareth (even though I did before), or Mozart's music, but these entries usually don't get much of any attention. Okay, to be honest this blog is not getting any comment these days anyway so it bugs me, I am wondering if my Muse (Calliope? Thalia? maybe Clio?) is faulty, or abandoning me. Anyway, actuality forced me to blog about something else. The recent earthquake touches me as I have many Italian friends, not many of whom I kept in touch over the years, but I still have a few "active" friendship with Italians. So I got very worried when I learned about the earthquake that struck the center of Italy, even though my friends mainly live in the north. That said, the Italian community I was hanging with in my younger years (of a decade now, or almost) was made of people from all around the peninsula, and of course they had friends and relatives all around the map too. Adding to this that one of them could have been in the center for one reason or another, and you have fairly good reasons to worry. I have been through an earthquake myself, of much smaller intensity, and it was still not fun.

My proximity with Italians reminds me that I am not far away from tragedies like this one: I can be touched by it on a personal level. It saddens me that such a beautiful country (even though I sometimes find its people insufferable) is in suffering today. Earthquakes of such magnitude, you think it could happen to a far away third world country, not in a developed country where long ago Western civilisation found a second breath and developed (after it started in Greece). But it is true that Italy has never been safe from nature's irrational wrath. It not only had its share of earthquakes, but it also has a couple of volcanoes and a few cities in danger of sinking. Which reminds me that I want to see Venice before it gets swallowed in water and mud. The land of Italy is beautiful even in its most humble village, but its soil will never quite forgive it for it. And, in a way, neither will its people: the country has of course a history of violence and corruption that they are unable to get rid of. It reminds me of what Orson Welles said in The Third Man (which I have never watched, ironically enough), which I will put here as a conclusion to this post:

"In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."