Don’t know if you heard, but there was a 7.8 earthquake here today. It was in Chengdu, though, so only a little movement was felt here in Beijing. Jack and Jed had to use their knowledge from the earthquake drills they’ve done and then were evacuated from school for about 45 minutes
Jackie and I were in my apartment when we started hearing the closed windows banging like the wind outside was howling. A few seconds later my apartment building started swaying. Jackie and I ran to the bathroom of my apartment. I told her to stand in the door frame since I remember from early elementary school that that is the safest place to be in an building during an earthquake. My recently purchased coffee plunger in the kitchen fell off the counter and shattered. A few other things fell off my walls.
Things kind of calmed down but then started up again. We were walking around the apartment trying to find our shoes so we could go outside. At this time, it felt like walking on a cruise ship on a choppy sea. It wasn’t like I was about to fall over, but I did kind of hold on to the walls to keep my bearings.
After the swaying had completely stopped, we walked down the five flights of stairs to the ground floor. I heard hordes of screaming children from the elementary school behind my apartment complex. The children’s wailing made this descent down my stairwell a rather surreal experience.
Jackie and I went outside where a large group of people had already congregated. Everyone was frustratedly looking at their cell phones and trying to use them to no avail. The cell phone network had gone down. It was kind of strange to look at around at scores of people and not see anybody using a cell phone. In China in 2008, this is a rare site.
Well, I never thought I’d say this having had first hand experience – but earthquakes are scary.
This afternoon around 1.30pm I was sitting quietly at my desk, contemplating how much longer I could put off asking a colleague what on earth his customer was talking about when I noticed a strange, rhythmic creaking noise in the office. I looked around and no one else seemed particularly bothered, so I thought nothing of it and went back to studying my fingernails. Then I thought I felt a bit busy as the room seemed to be moving a bit. And that’s when everyone else looked up and started to look a bit pensive.
No one actually got out of their chair except the boss, who went to look out the window. There was a strange sense of calmness amongst everyone. I had not twigged what was going on yet, but the boss said “yep, it’s an earthquake”. I thought he was joking initially, but then the building started to sway and it felt like being on a rowing boat in a storm. I stood up and staggered back a wee bit, and we all gathered up our bags and congregated in the hall outside.
What do you do when you are on the 24th floor of a swaying building in an earthquake? I would not immediately have said get in the elevator myself, but that is what we did. I have to say that is when I started to panic slightly. There were about 15 people squeezed in and it shuddered and shook all the way down as the building swayed. The building management had not yet sounded the alarm for evacuation, but as our boss had noticed what was happening, we were a step ahead of the crowds. I wondered where we would go as there are nothing but giant tower blocks all around. There is no safe haven in downtown Bangkok, it seems. So we trekked outside and along the road a bit to stand outside a different very tall building and discussed what to do – at which point all the fire alarms in the surrounding buildings went off and people started pouring out onto the street.
