A Rough Start

The magnitude 6.0 earthquake that struck Malawi on Saturday night, December 19, spurred us into action. We had been closely following the earthquakes there, but this one confirmed the unusual nature of the seismic sequence. It also happened to be the most destructive. Leonard Kalindekafe, director of Malawi’s Geological Survey, asked us to come and monitor the ongoing quakes. However, mobilizing the needed equipment over the holidays turned out to be a challenge.

Within two days, we located ten seismometers: eight from the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS), and two from Cindy Ebinger, a seismologist at University of Rochester in upstate New York. Cindy offered to send us her instruments, which we would carry on the plane with us. IRIS planned to ship their instruments directly to Malawi. On Christmas Eve, as we headed home to our families, everything seemed to be in order. We purchased plane tickets for Dec. 30, and planned to celebrate New Year´s Eve in Lilongwe, Malawi’s capital, with a couple of Carlsberg Specials at the Diplomat Pub. From there, we would head north to the epicenter.

Not all of it happened as planned. Shipments were canceled. Boxes went missing. Flights were changed. Shipping the IRIS equipment directly to Malawi required two weeks in transit, minimum. We considered wild back-up plans: “Let’s truck everything from Johannesburg to Malawi!” Just as quickly we rejected them: Johannesburg is 1,000 miles away, and would have required four border crossings.

More or less everything that could go wrong, did. The delays and false-starts were particularly frustrating since the clock was ticking; the rate of aftershocks declines steadily following a major earthquake. Each day of delay meant less information about the origin of the big earthquakes.

After two days of arranging and rearranging, hair pulling and hand wringing, we departed New York on New Year’s Day with equipment for five seismic stations, all of it packed into our checked luggage. We even crammed two seismometers into our carry-on backpacks; they passed through security at JFK apparently unnoticed. Eighteen hours later our eight 50-lb bags arrived at the VIP customs lounge in Lilongwe. Leonard helped speed us and our equipment through customs. Within an hour, we were in a 4×4 speeding towards Karonga. Almost nothing went right prior to our departure from JFK; from that point forward, nothing really went wrong.