I Survived an Earthquake...Now What?

It all came way too fast. The next thing I knew, I was running down the fire escape for my life, scared that I might not live another day to see my two Scottish cats.

At that time I didn’t even know what was happening. To be honest, Earthquake was the last thing I thought of because I’d never experienced anything close to this before. Well, first time for everything, huh?

I kept hearing the blasting explosive noises, which later I found out was the sound of elevators crashing against the walls.

My office is located on the 42nd floor, but I was fortunate enough to be on the 9th to accompany my friends on their smoking break. I don’t smoke, though, I just like being there chatting with my two close friends about random things (which if someday somehow some of them get leaked to the public, we might as well get executed, haha).

And I was lucky yet again that the conversation we were having got extended for a reason I seemed not to remember. Because if it was any other day, we would’ve been in the lift heading back to our desks. But on that particular special day, the earthquake struck during our day and the lift was the last place anyone would want to be in.

So, I thanked my lucky stars that day, even though I don’t believe in that kind of thing.

Approximately, Mar 28, 13.23

“You feeling the tremor?”

I had little next to no time to respond to the question. The next millisecond later, I saw people starting to notice something was up. My stupid self thought they were overreacting. A couple of them started to run to the building’s core and placed their hands on it.

I don’t know what it does, but I blindly followed.

The first blasting noise that I told you earlier arrived. Then another. And another. And another…

At that time it felt almost as if a bomb went off.

Yes, it was that loud.

“This building will fucking collapse” ~ a thought that I kept to myself.

And before I disappeared into my own head, I heard this:

FIRE ESCAPE, FIRE ESCAPE, THERE, THERE, LET’S FUCKING GO!

I didn’t have much time to proceed. To be honest if they told me to jump off the building, I would probably have done so.

I ran as fast as I could. I swear all of these happened within less than a minute. But it was the longest “less than a minute” in my life. By far.

Mind you, I recently started going to the gym and doing cardio, although not very intense, but still, I was running out of breath fast. Then the dizziness hit.

I thought I was having a vertigo attack. I suffered from Miniere’s disease and the vertigo is fairly common symptom, so you can imagine the horror.

It turned out to be a side effect of the earthquake. No one told me this before and not surprisingly, many people thought they were going to have a vertigo, too, so this is a new information to most of us.

You learn something new every day, though I’d rather not in a situation like this.

Apparently, when the ground shakes, your inner ear (which helps with balance) can get confused, making you feel lightheaded or off-balance. The sudden movement can also trigger vertigo for some people, especially in my case when I’m sensitive to motion.

Or it could be because of the panic and adrenaline rush that caused the lightheadedness, or visual disorientation as the objects around you are moving unpredictably and our brain struggles to keep up.

Approximately, Mar 28, 14.00

I was outside the building, as there were many people. We were in CBD area and there are a lot of tall office buildings nearby.

So this felt like a protest where everyone is gathered because of the same reason. In our case, it was to survive, or you could say that to almost every protest. People coming together, driven by a shared cause.

Only this time, instead of fighting for rights or justice, we were fighting against fate itself.

The nightmare didn’t stop there as it was reported that there will be an aftershock coming in 30 minutes.

People were still shaken, me included.

After I managed to get off the building safe, I made a phone call to my loved one and my family. They were safe. I was relieved, but one more thing…

THE CATS!

As soon as my consciousness came back, I opened the CCTV app to check on my cats. The internet was very slow as there were many people doing the same thing. I was panicking. I texted my condo group and asked if the building was still alright and if there was any damage.

I was then informed that the building was safe and my cats were fine according to the CCTV app. I don’t think they even knew what was happening.

And they don’t need to.

Approximately, Mar 28, 16.30

There were reported of aftershocks, but luckily we didn’t feel it.

HR announced that we could go home and they placed a policy for all of us not to enter the building until further notice.

Public transportation such as Subway and Sky Train were closed. Traffic was dead. Only buses were available and it was so packed that I don’t think even an ant could get in.

I tried calling Grab (like Uber), but no driver picked up. I decided to walk as far as possible in hope that there would be some places that Grab drivers were not so busy and eventually they would answer my request.

I walked for 5 km (it was nothing compared to most people that day). I stopped by McDonald’s and had french fries for a dinner.

My friend’s girlfriend came and picked us up and dropped me off at my place. If it weren’t for her, maybe I think I might have spent the night in the public park and waited for the next day to arrive.

Approximately, Mar 28, 20.30

That day, fear was a shared language, and survival was the only thing on our minds. But when I finally got home trying to make sense of what was happening, saw my cats lounging like nothing had happened, I realized something:

Life keeps moving, whether we’re ready for it or not.