Shaken, not Stirred

Here is a mail I wrote to my friends a few hours after last Sunday's earthquake in Taiwan. I hope other readers find it interesting too!

Let me share with you the news of a moving experience - my first earthquake.

http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/bulletin/020331065250.html

You might have seen on the news already, Taiwan has been hit by an earthquake, measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale. The island of Taiwan is quite big and made up of several cities. The city that was affected the most is Hua-Lien to the East. I am in a small city called Hsinchu, to the north-east, an hour's drive from Taipei, and home to the high-tech companies that drive the island's economy. I came here last Sunday to work on a project.

So, at 2:53 pm in the afternoon on Sunday, I was working on my laptop, when I felt a mild shaking in the floor. My first thought was that there's a heavy truck passing in the street outside. Then I remembered that I am on the 19th floor of the hotel. It is a little difficult to describe the composite experience of the next one minute, made up as it was of several sights, sounds and sensations, but I shall try.

This is how my unverbalised thoughts proceeded in the next few seconds - is it an earthquake - this really is an earthquake - wow, an earthquake - what time is it (2:53 pm) - (by this time the room really started shaking, with higher frequency, higher amplitude and in all directions) where's my wallet - ok, let's go - wait, i'm wearing flimsy hotel slippers, where are my shoes (luckily, I was fully dressed at this time, or I would have looked around for things to wear) - ok, now I'm ready (a glass fell and broke in the bathroom, some CDs fell to the floor) - where's the door - my god this thing is really heaving (the displacement must have been 1-2 metres on the 19th floor). I was having a hard time staying upright and was holding on to the door for support, but I noticed that the motion was quite smooth, like sitting on top on a tall spring. So, I opened the door and it took me sometime to get out with all the rolling. The stairwell is right next to my room, I think it was a good idea to avoid the elevators, because eventually one of the elevators got stuck. So I opened the stairwell door, again, with some effort because I was getting pushed around seismologically. I said to myself I hope this thing doesn't start to collapse, cause I have a long way to go.

Then I noticed the cleaning lady had fallen/was sitting on the floor next to the service elevator, with her carts around her and she was holding her chest and breathing heavily and obviously scared. So I said, get up, get up, come on, let's go, let's go, come on woman, this is no time to talk to me in Chinese (ok, I didn't say that), let's go, let's go. So, I held both her arms, helped her on to her feet, and still holding her by the arms, walked down do the 18th floor. The shaking had stopped by this time. On the 18th floor, she found a colleague, a man, and they discussed something. I didn't quite follow why, but they decided to stay on the 18th floor. Probably they wanted to take the elevators, maybe there was work to finish ?

So, with everything quiet by now, I decided to climb down, moving fast. A couple of floors down I noticed Armando and Mahender a few flights below, and called out to them. They stopped for me, and then we walked down, thrilled and excited about the experience, saying, wow have you ever seen anything like this before, the higher floors really move, I'm going to tell all my friends about it, better call home, no one told me about this when they asked me to come here, they should give us a hazard allowance, and so on.

On the 6th floor or so, we passed a lot of chefs and their assistants, men and women, standing around, excited like us, grinning and looking a little confused about what they should do. Finally, in the lobby, the smiling hotel staff asked us, everything OK ? - by this time everyone was laughing/smiling/generally thrilled.

When we got outside we noticed that some material had fallen off the facade of the hotel, but that was the extent of the damage. People, especially the locals who had other places to go, were clearing out of our high-rise hotel, including a woman who probably was a bride at her reception. Some of the older women had tears in their eyes - a couple of years back there was a major earthquake in which several thousand people were killed. I now know that our hotel withstood that quake, which might be good, or do the stresses accumulate over time ?

Everything settled down pretty fast. After a while we got back to our rooms by the elevator, and I remember thinking to myself, thats it ? I was hoping to get some work done in the afternoon, but now my mind is wandering about, and it will be sometime before I have settled down to work again.

The local channels had pictures already by the time I got back to my room, and one that you have probably seen is of a crane falling off a high-rise under construction. People on the street were looking at construction eqiupment falling off the builiding and praying. CNN had the story in half an hour. Now the pictures from Hua-Lien have started coming in, I think the damage is quite high. However, from my 19th floor room in probably the highest building in Hsin-chu, I can see no damage here at all and everything is normal.

What am I doing to prepare for the next one ? I have kept my shoes, cellphone, wallet and a bathrobe near the door!

May all our earthquakes be mild!

Mohit