Why do natural disasters occur when you`re sleeping?

I`ve always wondered why natural disasters happen when people are sleeping, or at least at the worst possible time they could happen. Obviously there is never a convinient time for a natural disaster to occur but some times of day are definitely more inconvinient than others!

Let`s take this morning for example. For the last 3 days my hostess (shout out to Greta and all the Cruzalegui`s!!!) here in Lima has been talking of feeling tremors during the day and the middle of the night. Two nights ago, I watched her nightly routine of clearing chairs away from the dining table and clearing the route to the front door. Last night we were watching Scent of a Woman on TV (its so nice watching TV in the evenings again...*sigh) and she asked if I felt a tremor, I didn`t feel a thing. I started to think that she was maybe being just slightly too cautious, that is until this morning.

7.50am this morning, I jumped out of bed (literally in one movement) right into an earthquake. The whole house was shaking, Greta had just run into the bedroom to wake me up (I`m still not sure if it was her or the earthquake that woke me actually). It was extremely loud and the whole building sounded like a huge jackhammer was giving it a good beating. Having just woken out of deep sleep, I really cannot remember what I was thinking, I was just completely panicked thinking what on earth was going on! 10 seconds later with me holding 1 year old Isabella on the stairs halfway out the building it stopped. And that was it. Everyone had a look around, made sure everyone was ok and went back to their homes.

Isabella bless her, had no idea what was going on and was looking at me like she usually does and laughing her head off. I was only one sanity point ahead of Gigi the dog who was uncontrollably shaking and had managed to piss on the living room floor. I still don`t know how I felt at the time, on the news we heard it had been between 5.3 and 5.8 on the scale with 5.5 being the most quoted figure, but as the epicentre had been out at sea we had feared better than otherwise. I do know that I am utterly useless at disaster management! Everybody here had been through it before, knew what to do, how to act where to go, I was just a straight up liability!

I am surprised that 10 seconds managed to feel like an age and that I woke up, panicked, ran and had the prescence of mind to help with the baby before heading almost completely out of the building. Its like time slows down and some kind of instinct automatically kicks in.

I`d like to say I never want to go through that again, I`d hope that if it happened at a more convinient time of day, I would act like a sane human being or have some sort of logical thought pattern, but to be honest, I can`t be sure and I`m not willing to put my reactions to the test thank you very much! I really hope they don`t have any more tremors or quakes while I`m here....I hope its not too much to ask!

Other than this morning my first week here in Peru has been bliss, I haven`t done much, like seriously, this has been the slowest week I`ve had this whole trip, but I think it was due! I`ve eaten a lot, slept a lot, managed to watch CSI (love cable TV) and I`ve spent time walking around this superb area of San Miguel where Ì`m staying. As I said its a couple hundred metres away from the sea, the buildings and houses are gorgeous and the local marina and shopping complexes have amazing shops and casinos to boot! Beats the hell out of a lot of classy areas I`ve seen in other countries.

I`m off to visit Lima town centre this evening, have a look at their old town, maybe try out some more delicacies, I tell ya if at any time I lost weight on this trip, I`ve managed to gain it all back this week thats for sure, but thankfully I didn`t have space in my suitcase for weighing scales! ;-)