Another Earthquake in Italy

[Ros]

We just had an M5.3 earthquake.  The epicentre seems to be north Tuscany...

http://www.emsc-csem.org/Earthquake/earthquake.php?id=322718

There have been quite a few small aftershocks too.

MG, hai sentito la terremoto da te?

Hope no one has been hurt...

[mecki]

5.3 is only a liitle one. 
In other parts of the world quakes of a similar magnitude happen several times a year.
People living in Wellington/New Zealand for instance probably wouldn't even notice a bit of shaking like that. 

[Ros]

Indeed.  In the big scheme of things, it is small. But it is significant in a place where there are few events of this kind.  Just last year we also had a 6.3 and there were some deaths involved. There's still damage to buildings and people injured due to falling objects etc.

I'm pretty sure that my Japanese colleagues wouldn't even look up from their desks for a 5.3...

Quite exciting here though 

[Boomer]

In England a 5.3 would have most people decorating their underwear.
I was south of San Francisco (Boulder Creek) in 2001 and a 4.2 woke me up and scared me silly.
My hosts slept through it and the next day Ramin told me that he'd previously slept through a 6.0.
I guess you can get used to anything if it happens often enough.
I did notice that houses there don't have fragile ornaments and most shelves there have a lip.

[mecki]

There actually was a 5.2 quake in England in 2008 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Lincolnshire_earthquake .

[Boomer]

Yup and a 5.4 in 1984 in Wales and in both cases most people redecorated their underwear.
The 2008 one resulted in over 5000 calls to 999 just in Birmingham.