Earthquake

It was 0758 when the earthquake hit on Wednesday. I was in the kitchen of my hostel in Taipei, Taiwan making coffee.

The floor beneath my bare feet started to shake hard, the noise was like a stampede. At first I thought “wow that’s a crazy vibration from the train station,” but the trembling turned to violent shaking and didn’t ease. It was like a juggernaut.

The volume of things rattling increased rapidly and then tiles began falling off the walls in the shower and smashing. There was a shifting of the whole building as I staggered in a zig-zag out into reception trying to steady myself. Everything was moving!

We were on the third floor of a building. I thought, “I can’t get out fast enough, safer to stay inside and get under a table. And even if I can get outside, I am surrounded by skyscrapers, nightmare if they come crashing down.”

The entire building was now swaying and tilting heavily left and right like a suspension bridge. It was surreal. How it didn’t collapse is a credit to the structural engineering of all buildings in Taiwan. They are built to last.

The receptionist, a young 20-something, was flipping out unable to say anything other than muffled sobs and internal screams as she ran to stand in the doorway squeezing her eyes shut. I was still holding my coffee that was shaking like jelly, when an elderly SE Asian man appeared and gripped the front desk, crying out “what’s happening?”

I turned to yell at him with wide eyes and my heart pounding, “EARTHQUAKE!!!!!!”

At this point I was preparing to throw myself under a table incase the ceiling collapsed. The lights were flickering and nothing was staying in one place.

The whole episode lasted about a minute but it felt like forever and the emotions I went through are very hard to describe. There was definite fear, vulnerability and also a sense of loss of control. But I was also working out what was the safest way to protect myself. All I kept thinking was “F*** I have no shoes on if there is debris and glass I am going to cut up my feet,”. I knew this was a situation I couldn’t escape from so just needed to think rationally, somehow.

The epicenter of the quake was in Hualien, a coastal city in the east, I was supposed to be in that very day. I delayed my trip because my Taiwanese friend Kay wanted to meet on April 4th so I stayed in the capital an extra two days. Luck, providence or sliding doors, I still can’t get my head around how fortunate I am that I missed the danger zone.

The quake had a magnitude of 7.3. It was a whopper and was felt across the north, west and also east coast of Taiwan. The national park I wanted to hike in, Takoro Gorge, claimed the lives of three hikers struck by rock fall.

Yesterday’s quake was the country’s biggest earthquake for 25 years. That one claimed 2500 lives and scarred a lot of people of my generation and older.

What yesterday showed me is that even after years of being out of journalism my instinct for being in a “hostile environment” still kicked in. I had to explain to two girls not to get into a lift and to get away from windows incase they shattered. People behave erratically under stress especially when it is potentially life threatening.

Today I saw my Taiwanese friends who unpicked what happened yesterday compared to 1999. They gave measured responses and were surprised how the international media covered it. The people here are unfazed by an event like this as they live with it.

It is remarkable I think, how Taipei and the rest of the country had very little damage given the magnitude of the quake. After the Tsunami warning was lifted I took the underground like all the other commuters. It was like nothing had happened. I walked around the city and you would never have known what happened that morning.

I got a refund for the Hualien train tickets I had bought last week to travel today. I don’t get paid to run towards the disaster zone anymore. My life is better without extra drama. The disruption to the train service up and down the country yesterday was justified compared to the UK which is always screwed up regardless. And quite frankly an embarrassment given we invented the bloody railway!!

The death toll this morning stood at 7 according to local media with hundreds injured and missing not thousands. I hope these figures remain low.

This magic little island is so efficient and well-prepared for disaster management I am glad it happened here and not anywhere else. It sits across two tectonic plates and is prone to quakes, so they have, over the decades, honed safety like no other nation. Every building is made with the most stringent safety checks to withstand extreme force.

It was a shocker of an experience and one that will live with me forever, but I am so grateful it is an experience I had that also left me unscathed. There were two aftershocks I personally felt that morning, 20 mins apart after the big shake. Everyone at the hostel was still jittery, me included. Reports by the media say there were hundreds of aftershocks closer to the epicenter throughout the day. I didn’t feel those.

I have been travelling in Taiwan for the last 6 weeks and I am totally in love with this country. The people are kind, considerate, helpful even though English is hardly used outside of Taipei. They don’t have an agenda. Their curiosity is genuine and there are few foreigners here.

It is more off gird travelling, if you need everything in English, and cant eat their food, forget about coming. You have to use technology to figure things out, unless you’re fluent in Mandarin. Transport is incredibly affordable and efficient, food is fantastic and the weather a lot less hotter than Thailand. It has such natural beauty with extraordinary mountains, national parks, diving, superb coffee and also has yoga here too. It is a gem!

Taiwan is a place I will be spending a lot more time in, earthquakes or not. I have never felt safer and more welcomed than here.