Earthquake experience

Boxing day 2006 was my first real earthquake experience. It was yesterday evening and I was just chatting to family and friends on Meebo, when the studio room that are living in started swaying more than shaking from side to side. We have long floor to ceiling curtains that cover the doors to the balcony and those were swaying with the motion of the building.

When the first shock came we were not suitable dressed to exit the building, so we panicked and scrambled around for some clothes to wear. We then sort of half carried on watching TV and tried to continue chatting on the Internet, when the second shock came, which to me sounded like a truck going by. In fact I asked my wife if it was just just that, she looked at me and said that it seems to be; then the building started to sway again and we decided to exit the building.

Standing outside all appeared to be normal with people milling around and scooters whizzing by as normal. We stood around outside on the sidewalk for about ten minutes then decided that we should go back in. Actually the earthquake more than being scary just seems to make you feel a bit queasy and disorientated from the swaying building.

According to the TV news reports this morning the earthquake was way down in the south of the island in a place called Hengchun and we are living more or less in the centre in Taichung. Taichung was more or less at the epicentre of last big earthquake in Taiwan in 1999, when about 2000 people died.

They also reported that some buildings are down in the Hengchun area and showed some fire fighters trying to escape from a gas fire on the 1st floor balcony of a building. They also reported that there are two people dead and forty eight injured.

Check the BBC report for more information.