So as most of you have heard now, we had a big earthquake in Tainan this morning. A little after eight, Jenny and I took Draidan to the park. We were almost there when she suddenly grabbed my arm and said, "Earthquake." I didn't feel anything at first and assumed that the garage door next to us was moving up to let a car out. Turns out, it was the earthquake causing it, too. The trees started to sway and even cars stopped. (You usually don't feel quakes in a car.)
Everyone came pouring outside and then about a minute later it stopped. We went back to our walk and didn't think much else about it. We have earthquakes relatively often and they are usually nothing for concern.
When we arrived back however, the first thing I noticed was pieces of concrete laying on the sidewalk outside our building and steps broken off. I said to Jenny, "I am scared to see what our place is going to look like." We walked into the lobby and saw huge plate glass windows totally shattered and the gardens roped off because pieces of the building had fallen off. Then, we got to the elevators, which were all offline and the marble around one of them had fallen off and shattered. Luckily, we live on the third floor, so we didn't have a climb ahead of us. It would suck to be living on the 20th floor!
As I opened the door I was greeted with a new sight. Tons of sand and piece of concrete. "This is going to be bad," I said. I stepped in and was speechless. Our walls pretty much shattered. A lot of the breaks are about 4-6 centimeters deep and pretty much every room had been messed up badly. Drai's room was the only one not damaged. It even shot the nails out of some of the boards on the ceiling. I figure we are looking at about $10000 to $15000 CDN in damage. We called the insurance company and they said our earthquake insurance only covers us if our house collapses or is unlivable. (Anyone got some dynamite?)
Our poor cat was so traumatized that he was standing on the balcony for three hours crying. He wouldn't come inside and if we brought him in, he would run back out again. Thank god we weren't home because it would have been really scary to have been inside will all the walls blowing out. We found out just now that in the last 12 hours there have been 204 aftershocks. We only felt four of them. The cat is probably way more aware of them though which is why he has not wanted to come in. The house itself didn't take too long to clean up. It was done in about an hour but who knows how long it will be until we can fix everything. Essentially our whole house has to be re-concreted, painted and roofed. It might be cheaper to fly an uncle out here to do it! Anybody? Anybody?
Draidan walked around the house for about 10 minutes pointing at the walls with Jenny's shoe and grumbling angrily to himself. It was pretty funny. He sounded really pissed off.
Compared to some of the people in this building, we got off lucky. One family's wall fell down and they now share an apartment with another family. The side of another fell right off.
The damage around our area has been minimal. Out of the 100 or so students I taught today, not one of them had damage to their house, which makes me question how well our place is built.
There was some major damage around Tainan and Kaoshiung though. A freeway pretty much collapsed. All the railways have been shut down from mid-Island south. A few houses collapsed and the university near hear flooded. A huge textile factory went up in flames when a gas line ruptured too.
I guess we are safe and that is all that matters. It gave me a kick in the ass to fix the place, sell it and get the hell out of dodge.
Don't worry about us though. We are fine.
Especially me. Super fine actually. I seem to just keep getting better looking with age...
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