A first-hand earthquake experience from a teacher in Loon

Earthquake experience by Lita

Tuesday October 15, 2013 at approximately 8:12 in the morning, all of a sudden I felt that the ground was slightly shaking, I looked at the ceiling I saw everything shaking, the room, the walls, and other things inside the room. I knew for sure it’s an earthquake. I went to the living room and the shaking kept going harder and harder. I quickly pushed the 43 kids outside just so they wouldn’t get hurt if the dormitory would collapse. The other dormitory supervisor was the last to go out carrying our 4-year old pupil and she was hit by the ceiling that fell off. When we left the dormitory, I remember hearing banging on doors, windows, ceilings and seeing some of the rubble falling of the school buildings. I was so relieved that the dormitory did not collapse though there were some cracks on the wall and all the ceiling fell off. We were all crawling to the open field with the kids screaming and yelling with so much fear, some without slippers some had but without pair. We clutched each other for support while the shaking continued. I told the kids to pray. I tried to close and open my eyes to wake up from this horrible nightmare but it was real.I thought that it was the end of the world. It seemed like a long time before the movement stopped. Suddenly, a middle-aged man shouted that there was a great tsunami coming to the town and so we all ran to the hill passing through the totally damaged houses not minding the danger of stepping nails, blocks, bricks and broken glasses in the street on our way up. The kids were shaking, most of them were crying and all our face expression was full of fear. An hour after, a man announced that the tsunami was a false alarm. And so, the kids still crying ran all the way back to the dormitory and gathered outside. Soon, lots of panicked people came to the school’s open field and they were standing out there. Some of them were crying and others were holding their family members. I kept hearing the familiar “Buuwahh, buuwahh!” sound which is used by our co-villagers to shoo off earthquakes. Since we weren’t able to gather up even a single cent inside the dormitory during the earthquake, we asked some food from our neighbors and friends for the kids to eat, since we’re scared to get food inside the dormitory. Each of them ate 2-spoonful of rice and drank half a glass of water. That was all our meal. There weren’t any relief goods due to broken bridges. At night, it was raining hard with thunder and lightning, we were standing there, we felt the floor under our feet was moving, of course it was an aftershock that we kept feeling many times later. And so with our 2-meter tarp, we stood in the middle of the night ‘til dawn holding every edge of the tarp just so we won’t get wet as strong rain and wind hits our tent. The day after, some of the kids got coughs and colds; some are experiencing nausea and vomiting and some got chickenpox. Seeing the kids in that situation made me so confused and worried. I ended up crying not knowing what to do. Trauma and constant fear linger in us who have been affected by the magnitude 7.2 earthquake.