Around The World In 72 Days - Earthquake Special Post-Morten

Following the time honored principle of shutting the barn door after the horse has escaped (or as we say in our family buying the purple candles*), we have over the two days since the earthquake been doing a lot of reading about what one should do in these situations. 

*This refers to a terrible ice storm we experienced when first married that left us without power for days on end in the middle the winter. My younger brother who was in the same area at the time, gifted us with a HUGE box of purple candles to take care of us should this happen again. Said box followed us for the next two decades before finally we realized they had melted into an unusable mass.

I happy to report that the four of us, Wife, 2.2, 2.3 and myself, did virtually NOTHING correct. 

• We should have gotten under a table or bed. We did not.
• We should not have braced ourselves in a doorway. We did.
• We should have stayed in bed covering our neck and head with a pillow. We did not.
• We should have gotten away from a area of potential glass falling. We did not.

I am also dismayed to report that the literature is sadly lacking on what to do when one finds oneself on a toilet doing one's business when the earthquake hits. The two grandchildren, in the way of teenagers, have made quite a few jokes on what the emergency rescuers would be saying as they found my carcass in the rubble on the toilet. 

Lastly, I will report that while we had the bad luck of being in Taiwan for the worst earthquake in 25 years, we had the good luck of it being Taiwan. For it turns out that Taiwan (responding to past disasters) has become the world's leader in earthquake related building codes, retrofitting, infrastructure design, and emergency response. If one was going to have to experience, this is the place to do so. 

Wife and I have decided that we can check this experience off our travel 'to do' list for keeps. 

Around The World In 72 Days - SPECIAL EARTHQUAKE EDITION!

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