Reporters on the Job

• All Shook Up: When a magnitude 7.9 earthquake rocked Peru (see story), correspondent Lucien Chauvin was attending a municipality meeting in Lima. Everyone remained calm as the room began to shake, but after one minute into the nearly two-minute earthquake, the group decided to get out of the building. On the street, Lucien found a completely different situation.

"There were people screaming and embracing," says Lucien. "Cars had stopped, and drivers were standing outside their vehicles, staring blankly. An older woman was making signs of the cross and hysterically shouting that the end of the world was upon us."

Lucien understood their extreme reactions when he saw the municipality building swaying while ripples rolled through the street. In the end, Lucien says that, compared with other parts of the country, "Lima was spared the brunt of the destruction."

• Under the Flight Path: Correspondent Mark Rice-Oxley would like to hope that this week's Climate Camp and the growing clamor over climate change in Britain (see story) would go some way toward deflating the country's enthusiasm for flying. But he is reminded almost every minute of the day that this is not the case. For the past eight years, he has lived under the Heathrow flight path in southwest London.

"The skies overhead are like a modern take on Magritte, with planes hanging everywhere," he says.

The noise isn't too bad "unless the wind changes direction: then they all start stacking from the east and it sounds like they're landing in my backyard." It was worse when he lived a few miles up the road. "My son was just a baby then, but he was transfixed by the constant hum of aircraft," he says. "One of his first words was 'Concorde.'

– Tom A. Peter
Staff