• Question: When earthquakes occur and you are off your shift, have you ever instantly switched on and gathered data mentally then wrote it down, clocked into work and provided your findings?

    Asked by whop536carr94 to Stuart Dunning, Oenone C, George F on 4 Dec 2025.
    • Photo: Stuart Dunning

      Stuart Dunning answered on 4 Dec 2025:

      Not mentally, but literally. I look at landslides, when an earthquake happens I will get straight onto any remote sensing and see what has happened – some hazards are urgent, for example landslide dams caused by an EQ that could flood downstream cities.

    • Photo: Oenone Chadburn

      Oenone Chadburn answered on 11 Dec 2025:

      Yep – in the Nepal earthquake of 2015. It happened at 11.56am in Nepal on Sat 25th April, but due to time differences this was 07.11 in the UK. Being an international emergency responder, I was still in bed at 7am, and was woken to a phone call to ask if my colleagues were OK. Fortunately, we knew within 1 hour my colleague and his family were safe, and we immediately then started to go into “response mode”, gathering as much information as possible to know what kind of support was required, and pre-positioning vital emergency supplies and staff to be able to travel to support the affected areas.

      I was still in my pyjamas at lunchtime, but fortunately, my husband bought me toast and coffee to I could keep on going 🙂

Comments

  • Photo: Alex C

    Alex C commented on :

    Yes – I work in natural hazards and find them fascinating, so it is hard to just ignore when a natural hazard event such as an earthquake happens.

    In December 2024 an earthquake happened in Vanuatu – in the Pacific Ocean north of New Zealand. Many of us that work in natural hazards space were quickly looking at satellite imagery to help work out where was most damaged, and by how much. We would then share this information with local officials to help them prioritise their response.

    A flood can be caused by a landslide, and the landslide can be caused by an earthquake. Looking at data and information allows us to work out what has happened – similar to a crime scene for the police, we forensically analyse events to ensure we know how they are caused, and what we can learn from them. When not doing that for my job, I often find myself reading information in the news and looking up data to try and understand events in other countries.