Yanbu Buzz Fizzles Out

Not the Yanbu blast, in case you thought it was...

Last week, for a span of about 5 days, Yanbu was gripped by volcano fever. The reason for the excitement was that two earthquakes, measuring about 4.5-5.2 on the Richter scale, rocked the mountains that hem Yanbu’s eastern edge. Overhead surveillance revealed that a gash could be seen in the earth and that magma had been forced close to the earth’s surface. The tremors felt here were quite mild. Sitting in my living room, all I could feel was a slight tugging sensation on the couch. The tremor was not significant enough to cause the pictures on the wall to move as the epicentre was about 150km away, near a town called Al Eis.

Residents of Al Eis were evacuated to Yanbu. This evacuation caused a few headaches, as some of the evacuating families had men with multiple wives. Customs here dictate that husbands with more than one wife are required to house them separately, lest they quarrel…Sooooo, extra accomodations needed to be provided.

There have been some pretty wild explanations as to what was causing the tremors.  Some people (although I’ve never met them)  have gone so far as to speculate that the earthquakes are fulfilling prophesies that signal the beginning of the end of the world. While others go only so far as to say that it’s obvious the earthquakes were caused because too much oil had been pumped out of the earth, causing it to become unstable…yikes.  As you may or may not know, the oil fields in Saudi Arabia are over 1000km away from Yanbu.  It would be like saying that an earthquake in Manitoba was caused by oil being pumped out in Alberta. Ha!

Needless to say, our excitement starved students were full of official predictions as to when the volcano was due to erupt. Some “official” predictions went so far as to state the specific day and hour! It’s no surprise that these predictions were wrong. In fact, a week has gone by and the latest reports are that the magma has since receeded and that there is no threat of an eruption anymore. I guess our local volcano was just a little shy. Oh well, at least we had a little bit of excitement (far enough removed to not be threatening, mind you) to spice up our mundane lives here in Yanbu.