Just a few minutes before 8am local time here in Taipei, I was in the bathroom, on the toilet, before I was to take my shower. I feel a sensation of shaking. I look around. The sensation is getting more and more pronounced. I have a realization that I am experiencing what I have only read about before...an EARTHQUAKE.
I vaguely remember that one should go to a door frame and hold oneself for support. The movement is side-to-side and I can clearly see the walls moving. I am not hearing anything crashing in the apartment. As the shaking is continuing, my mind is going to a strange space. I am not feeling fear. It is more an analytical space. I am looking at the walls moving (the shaking is just side-to-side thankfully) and I am wondering, "How much longer is this going to go?", and "Is the intensity of the shaking going to get worse?", and "If the walls start to go, what the hell do I do then?".
However, the shaking starts to subside and then stops. I go out and meet up with the rest of the family. No one has been hurt and miraculously there is actually very little damage considering all the things that could have been knocked off (you will see this in the pictures below).
We still have power and internet. One can hear the city life moving around us. In under an hour the news comes through. This had an epicenter off the Eastern Coast near the city of Hualien which we visited in 2017. It is known as the earthquake capital of Taiwan. There it was 7.5. We've hear numbers here in Taipei of between 6.4 and 7.0. There are tsunami warnings so we decided to pass on going out to a town on the coast today. We're not excited about going on the metro in general today. We will probably just walk around our home neck of the woods.
Where would you rather be when the earthquake hits?
Here (where Wife was)
Or here (where I was)
Examples of some of the apartment damage
Yet you will notice that all those glass bottles, in fact virtually every loose item, stayed put.
Experience of the Aftershock
3 comments:
Not an experience I'd like to have! I'm glad your family is okay
ah phew, toilet details have been shared. Read the blog posts in reverse order.
surely there is a tee-shirt in the make here. "I survived 2024 Taiwan earth quake on the toilet, and all I got was this tee-shirt"
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