Bev and Jerry, I've been following your reports - it sounds bad. I don't think I would find it easy to cope with, and like Brucie, I've got you all in in my prayers.

I just couldn't let Arnie's comment go. I couldn't find Richter levels for our little quakes, but used "fairly major" to mean "large heavy things fell down". There are Mercalli levels for the recent quakes, which are probably more helpful, but the historical ones have been hacked out (why?). I don't think it would need a huge one to compromise a structure like the Channel Tunnel. The active faults might originate in the Paleozoic basement, but they do project into more recent deposits - I've seen minor faults with offsets in feet at the surface in Tertiary rocks, which may affect post glacial material.

I think people over here - in the South East at any rate - would have a stronger emotional reaction to a small quake, because we don't expect them. My father assures me that I wouldn't like the feel, as he experienced the Brussels one in Brighton, and when I interviewed people who had experienced a smallish one on the East Coast of Kent, they were clearly disturbed by ornaments falling over. The nearest I've experienced was when an oil tanker exploded off Dover in the night, and that was something I wouldn't want to repeat.

More bad news from Iran, I have just heard - the shape of that country can be picked out on a seismic map of the Earth. One more burden in that area.

Penny