Wednesday, January 13, 2010

The force of nature

Anyone who lives in an area prone to tremors as we do must have felt the cold chill run down their spine when news broke of the devastation in Haiti caused by an earthquake of 7.0 magnitude.

Pictures in today’s papers show what damage can be done and the chaos that these freaks of nature cause.

Pam and I watched a programme on television the other night about the San Andreas fault which runs through California. There, people live knowing that at anytime they could experience an earthquake of the same magnitude as that which has just hit Haiti.

No matter how clever we become at observing and recording these phenomena, we seem to be incapable of predicting their timing and are mostly unprepared for their devastating effects. The forces of nature beat us every time.

Whilst we feel for the people of this impoverished Caribbean island, we are grateful that it wasn’t us.

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