Earthquakes, uncommon as they are, are as realistic to me as World War II or a sensible lawyer. I know they exist but I’ve never experienced them directly. This makes it all the more difficult to imagine what it must be like to experience one.

Malta sometimes has mild quakes but they’re barely more than the rumble a large truck makes as it passes by your house. In theory, I’ve experienced two. I don’t remember either of them.

These things interest me because, like everything about the natural world, unpredictability is what is fascinating.

In 1755, on November 1, a huge earthquake hit Lisbon¹. At the time, no one had figured out how to measure earthquakes so it’s hard to compare with more recent ones. Suffice to say that about a fifth of the population of Lisbon died which makes it one of the deadliest earthquakes in history.

Another deadly earthquake hit Sicily at the beginning of the 20th century.

Fissures measuring 5 metres wide opened up in the ground. Dazed locals watched the harbour run dry as the sea receded, only to witness the inevitable tsunami rush towards them. Whatever was not waterlogged burnt for five days. Historians estimate that 80% of the city was destroyed.

The Carmo Convent is one of the few destroyed structures that is still visible in Lisbon today. Lisboners rebuilt the city after the tragedy but left the Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, which was part of the convent, in ruins. This serves as a reminder of the horror of 1755.

What I find interesting is the effect this earthquake had on the rest of civilisation.

Firstly, many people were shocked that this happened on All Saints’ Day and that many churches were destroyed. Some interpreted this as an example of divine retribution. Many rejected this idea, pointing out that Lisbon’s notorious red-light district didn’t suffer much. People started to consider that perhaps these tragedies were not the actions of an angry deity after all.

Philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau used the incident to justify his belief that people should return to a more natural way of life, instead of living in cities. Without the city, he reasoned, there would not have been such loss of life.

German philosopher Immanuel Kant was fascinated with the earthquake. He tried to explain how it happened by describing large subterranean caverns filled with hot gases. He was wrong, but this is the first recorded instance of someone trying to explain a natural disaster using natural causes.

Furthermore, the Prime Minister of Lisbon surveyed all parishes to tell when the earthquake started and ended, which direction it came from, how many died, and the sea level. The results of this survey are still in the historical archive allowing historians to scientifically reconstruct the event. This data collection is viewed as the beginning of seismology.

Have you experienced any earthquakes? What was that like?

References

1. National centres for environmental information; (Retrieved 2019-06-27) [↩]

Remember: links were correct at time of publication.