Ok, a further update on the aftermath of the earthquake this afternoon. At 2:28 it was big and very shaky up on the 8th floor in my office. The news says it was a 7.8. Some people ran for the stairs, many of us stood around shaking in the lobby area until the floor stopped moving (mostly), then made our way down the stairs. A lot of plaster had fallen, and there were some crack in the walls, mostly on the inside, though a few were visible on the exterior. The streets, unsurprisingly, were filled with people. We then saw that a man and a woman were stuck in the glass elevator up on the 4th floor. The man was waving at us and the woman was kneeling down and crying. Fortunately some employee managed to get the power to the elevator back on and they came down and out safely. Everybody I've been able to check in with is fine. Some people are spending the night camped out on the street, but boredom and fatigue got the better of me pretty quickly and so I went home and walked up the 17 flights of stairs to my apartment. The elevator, unsurprisingly, is still shut down. Water and electricity are on in my building, I'm happy to say, after being off for only a few hours. So I feel very blessed. Reading the news, you'll see that it's difficult to feel like some people have been blessed by this. I was happy to see a few minutes ago, though, that the hospital next to my apartment has the lights back on and patients and doctors are visible through the windows. At around 9pm the windows were still black and that didn't seem to bode well.
I'm going to bed now. I expect that things will be calm tomorrow and I'll have no need to update you for a while. Love to all of you.
Matthew
Monday, May 12, 2008
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3 comments:
Thanks for the update - and really glad to hear you are ok! Its all over the Australian news so I was wondering about you esp. after hearing it was in Chengdu. The news said it went on shaking for 3 minutes! The largest quake I have been in was a little one that shook the windows in Vermont. I think one chimney cracked in upstate NY across the lake!
i'm so glad you updated - i was going to email you today to check in on you :-) i'm very happy to hear you're well, but good lord, the news we're getting about the region in general is staggeringly awful. i hope things continue to improve and that the casualty reports we're hearing are hopefully overblown.
Sadly, I can't imagine that they are exaggerated - the casualty numbers, that is. But in the end, 9 000, 15 000, 20 000, what does it really change in the lives of the people affected, you know? People ask me if I know anyone hurt, and I say "thankfully no", but that only means I didn't meet these people before they died, so... It's weird realizing that my ability to feel pain for others is all based on either some personal connection or the sheer magnitude of the event.
Like, news item: 1 guy died in Dallas today. It's strange that I don't get sad reading the obituaries.
Ramble ramble, harp harp. Thanks for checking in, guys!
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