Well, I sure hope our taz is alright.

120km (75 miles) south-west of Athens - quite a distance from Athens itself - but I bet they felt it quite strongly but hopefully with not much actual damage or injury to anyone there.

The problem with earthquake reporting is that sites like the BBC use the biggest closest main city as a marker. Too many times quakes have been reported "north of Tokyo" and people have contacted in a panic to find out it's hundreds of kms away near Hokkaido for example.

I'm fine! I felt it, and heard it, oddly... it was weird. I thought it was a huge, sudden rush of wind hitting the house or something, for a moment. It didn't really feel like the small earthquakes I've felt here before, so I wasn't quite sure what it was at first. But it was very short, and no problems here.

In fact, I think I was reading metachat at the time.

Glad you're okay taz.

Glad you're okay, taz. I was just reading an article on using Twitter as a communication tool in disasters.

Glad you're okay taz. And, yes, one does hear earthquakes. It's almost subliminal if you're not near the epicenter, but yeah you hear them. It's freaky.

Hey, I was going by

BBC Athens correspondent Malcolm Brabant said the quake shook his house vigorously for 20 seconds and sent him sprinting for the front door.

and you don't have to be right on top of the epicenter to have damage. Loma Prieta's epicenter was near Santa Cruz, but the damage we remember is the Marina District, the Bay Bridge, and the Cypress Freeway -- all at least 60 mi (100km) from the epicenter.

Anyway, this wasn't a blind panic about your personal safety, more wondering if you'd had anything fall and break.

No, nothing like that, but it may have to do with our location, as well, which I think is mostly bedrock. For me, it was odd, as I said, in that I didn't even recognize it as an earthquake at first; I knew something weird was happening, but it didn't have that same "jiggly" feeling I'm used to. Somehow it seemed more as if something was hitting the house from the outside, instead of movement from underneath. Of course, we haven't been here that long, so most of what I've experienced before was in Thessaloniki, where we were always seven or eight stories up, and things do feel different that way, I imagine.

But no breakage or cracked windows or anything.

Whew!, then.

Me, I've been in about one really detectable tremor, ever.

Oh btw I wasn't criticizing you stilicho, but rather the way it's often reported in international news.

Also glad taz is ok.

Me, I live in Japan so am a bit obsessed with earthquakes and generally have a couple of noticeable tremors a week.

Me, I was close to the epicenter of the last two big quakes in the San Fernando Valley (Sylmar '71 and Northridge '94... closer to the center of the second) and moved to an area that had its biggest shaker two years before (Paso Robles '03). And I still can't feel totally prepared for 'the next one'.

Any birds, snakes, or aeroplanes?