Thursday 27 February 2014

I Feel the Earth Move


Little short of an earthquake will wake me at night, I have no trouble getting off to sleep. So imagine the shock when, six years ago today, I was indeed woken by an earthquake. We were living in Beverley at the time, the epicentre was Market Rasen some 32 miles away as the crow flies.

Like many others I’m sure, I turned on my BBC local station to hear what they were saying. On Radio Humberside Steve Redgrave had extended his show rather than hand over to 5 Live. Here’s a little of what I heard.
 

I was not the only one tuning into Radio Humberside. John Osbourne, author of Radio Head, who grew up near Market Rasen and whose parents still live in the area did the same thing. He wrote:

I could have listened to updates on Five Live or talkSPORT, or switched on rolling news coverage on television, or even gone to bed and forgotten about it all, but I chose to listen to Radio Humberside because I wanted to hear how the quake was affecting people close to home: Grimsby, Scunthorpe and Goole.
‘If you know of anyone on your street who is alone and might be scared, please do the neighbourly thing-knock on their door, make sure they’re okay. Check that your own family are okay,’ Redgrave tells us. I decide not to phone my mum and dad though. Sleeping through an earthquake only to be woken by a phone call is the kind of irony that happens regularly in our home.   

This extract from Radio Head is read by Lee Ingleby.


Last year BBC Radio Lincolnshire’s William Wright recalled the events of that night and spoke to local resident and broadcaster Tom Edwards.



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