I won't bore you with the day leading up to the quake; it was ordinary in every way. As it was a Friday, I was at my elementary school that I teach at, per my usual schedule. When 5th period rolled around and I went in to teach the 2nd graders, I admit I was more upset at the text I had received from my husband telling me our Xbox 360 had just died than I was excited to see the kids. That feeling changed fairly quickly though, as it's impossible to teach adorable 2nd graders and remain grumpy. Our lesson was proceeding to plan, with the kids being happy and active, when the quake hit.....
At first, everything was exactly like March 9th, two days before, when the biggest earthquake I had experienced in my life up to that point hit. On that day, when the ground started rumbling, the 1st graders (again, at my elementary school) immediately hid under their desks while I stood in the doorway, the one thing I could remember from earthquake preparedness in my youth. As the building trembled, the 1st graders got a little scared, so I kept talking to them and assuring them it was alright. Once it stopped, the teachers checked on all the kids, and as nothing had happened other than some shaking, the day soon resumed its normal activity. As that was my first large earthquake, I was a little nervous about what had happened at first, but as no overly large consequences came from that quake, I soon began to feel that these earthquakes were no big deal, if that was a 7.0. I remember Aaron telling me that his Dad had joked with him about it maybe being a fore-shock, instead of the actual earthquake, and we laughed at the absurdity.
Unfortunately, he was right. When I first felt the rocking on March 11th, it was fairly slight. Right as I was becoming aware of it, one of the 2nd graders inquiringly asked 'Earthquake?' The rumbling became a little more pronounced then, and the 2nd grade teacher declared it to indeed be an earthquake and told the kids to get under their desks. They did this quickly, just as they always practice, and the 2nd grade teacher dove under her desk. Again, I stood in the door frame, remembering that it was supposedly the strongest place in a building structure, and having no desk to duck under. Japanese are apparently taught different earthquake strategies, however, as the 2nd grade teacher came out from under her desk and told me to please go hide under the table in the corner of the room. I quickly obliged, taking the few steps over to that side of the room and ducking down. I was amused by her insistence, as the earthquake didn't seem that bad. Just as I squatted down under the table, though, I was glad of her perseverance.
The rumbling of the earth changed, and suddenly the intensity rocketed up. The earth seemed to literally be jumping around underneath my feet, as we all tried to hang on. In addition, there was this rocking motion, as though we were all on a large boat at sea, which wasn't that disconcerting until you remembered, suddenly, that you were ON LAND. I looked around at the kids, who were all huddled under their desks, washcloths pressed to their faces in case of a gas leak, holding on to the bottoms of their desks as they shuddered and shuffled about. Some were looking around with me, fear making their eyes huge. Others were staring determinedly at the floor, not wanting to look up and see what was going on.
The rocking motion got more intense, and the whole building started to shake. The walls waved back and forth, and the TV on wheels in the corner started rolling around wildly. Things were falling over and toppling off bookcases and desks. The windows were rattling and shaking, and the whole building was making a sort of groaning noise, like the effort to keep itself whole was proving too much for it. The table I was hiding under, unfortunately, had a large fish tank on top of it. The water in it was splashing back and forth, and I could measure the strength and intervals of the rocking motion by how badly it was making the water splash out. Miraculously, it did not shake off of the table (although it was close). It did, however, manage to deposit 3/4 of its water onto the floor, and on me.
The shaking and rocking seemed to go on forever... it lasted a good three minutes in actuality, so in my head it felt like an eternity had passed. At its worst, I honestly thought the building was going to come down on us, that it couldn't move this much, be groaning this much, and not fall apart. My mind went blank when I had that thought, and after that I just tried to hold on. Finally, the shaking started to lessen. As it slowly, almost painfully, got weaker, the kids started to whimper in fear. I was in as much shock as them, but I kept calling out from under my table to hold on, that it wouldn't be much longer, that it was going to end soon.... I think I was saying it for myself just as much as them.
At last, the shaking completely stopped. At first I thought that everything was silent, as none of the children had moved or spoken. Then I realized that I somehow hadn't heard the alarms that were going off, and I noticed that the lights had all gone out. I slowly crawled out from under my shelter, as did the 2nd grade teacher. We told the students to stay put. As we poked our heads outside the classroom, we noticed that the fire door (a thick, tall, steel wall that slides out in case of fire and blocks off one end of the school from the other) had been engaged. Then, the emergency door, the small door in the middle of the fire door, opened, and the Vice Principal of my school came through. Some of the other teachers had emerged from their classrooms as well, but none of the kids. The Vice Principal shouted out that since the intercom system was down with the power outage, he couldn't tell us sooner, but that we all needed to get outside the building, and to please exit quickly and calmly. Almost immediately the kids exited from their classrooms, formed a single file line, and together with the teachers, we all walked outside together. The teachers, myself included, ran into the staff room on the way out to grab our cell phones.
The kids were quiet, and kind of pale, although some seemed to have an odd sort of nervous energy to them. A couple of them asked me if I thought it was scary. When I admitted it was, they confessed that they were scared too. Once we had filed outside, they sat down in orderly lines, and the Vice Principal talked to them a little bit. It was bitterly cold, and we had all left without grabbing anything, including our coats. The teachers were milling about on the perimeter of the kids, talking about the earthquake and trying to get information on their cell phones. Some were trying to call their families, but the lines were down and they couldn't get through. I couldn't get through to Aaron by calling either, but thankfully the internet on my smart phone was still working, and I managed to contact him through Gchat to find out he was okay. Once I ascertained his safety, I knelt down and talked to the kids, along with a couple other teachers. They were mostly okay at this point, talking with and comforting each other, except they were all horribly cold. I originally tried to rub a 6th grade boy's arms, as he was shivering, until eventually he told me (with a stiff upper lip) that he was okay, that everyone else was cold too, so he would try his best to endure. I grinned at his attempt to be an adult, then told him to at least huddle with all the other kids for warmth, which he conceded to. I then turned my attention to a 6th grade girl, the only one who was crying out of all the kids. She had just lost her house 3 months earlier to a fire, and only her family had escaped. None of her possessions had been saved. Their new house had just been built a few weeks earlier, and the poor girl had had as much as she could take. She kept sobbing that her new house had to have fallen down, that her family had to have died, and that there was no way it was still standing after such a strong earthquake. Other girls were huddled around her, hugging her and trying to comfort her. I went over there with my phone, and showed her (uselessly, as she can't read a high level of English) that my husband had just texted me that our house was okay, and our house is really old, so if it's okay, hers has to be. She didn't understand the English I showed her, but she understood what I was saying, and tried to calm down. I joined the girls huddled around her giving her hugs.
As we sat there, shivering, two more earthquakes rocked us, making the windows of the building behind us rattle again, and the rocking motion almost knocked me off balance as I tried to stand up. The 6th grade girl wailed every time an aftershock came, her anxieties coming back each time, until we calmed her down again. Teachers who had gone back inside to grab coats for the students came running out of the building, their arms full. At some point, we heard two large, rumbling sounds coming from somewhere far off..... To this day, I don't know whether they were explosions, or possibly even the sounds of the tsunami hitting the coast 40 minutes away from us. Regardless, at the time I plastered a smile on my face and told the kids it was probably just thunder, even though there was barely a cloud in the sky.
Eventually, Aaron came to my school. It was such a relief to see him, even though all I felt I could do in front of the kids was give him a quick hug. We talked with the kids a bit, the children shyly using their limited English with him and smiling. Together with the teachers, we helped set up a giant blue tarp the kids could sit in to take shelter from the cold wind. Soon, giggles could be heard emanating from their make-shift blue tent. Parents came to pick up their kids, and as soon as they were all taken away, Aaron and I left to go check on the other English teachers in our town.
We found one still at her school, and the other one we met on the way to her apartment. None of us really wanted to be alone, so we decided that it would be best for everyone to stay at my house, as it was relatively new and only one story, both appealing things at that moment. That night, with only candles for light and piles of blankets for warmth, we all stayed in my living room, as the sliding glass doors provided the quickest exit to the outside. The after shocks continued, every hour, and I lost count of the amount of times we got up to run outside. What little sleep we managed to get in between aftershocks was poor, but it was better than staring at our phones, trying to get information about what exactly had happened and how bad it was. We found out soon enough that it was much, much worse than any of us could have predicted. With a feeling of thankfulness that I had been able to contact most of my family and friends through Facebook or e-mail, I tried to read my Kindle by candlelight, before giving up and falling into a restless sleep.
No comments:
Post a Comment