We’ve had an exciting day! I was on the phone upstairs in my bedroom today chatting with my sister. Our roof is a fiberglass roof, check so when the wind blows a lot of times you can hear creaking and different noises. I noticed the normal sounds but all of a sudden realized that the room was moving. Meanwhile, Maggie was downstairs thinking she was accidentally shaking the desk and our friend Nate was playing Mario Dance, Dance Revolution and thought it was part of the game! It took me a few seconds to realize what was happening and while still on the phone I ran downstairs where Maggie, Corey and Nate were and asked, “Is this an earthquake??” Corey said it was and I told my sister, “I’ve got to go. There’s an earthquake!” and threw down the phone. Corey first said to get in the doorways and then we thought for a second about the poor renovations and construction the landlady had done to this house and he shouted to get out of the house. We all went outside. They say it only lasted a minute or so, but it felt like much longer than that! We stood in the yard all feeling dizzy, like in a funhouse when the floor is moving. It wasn’t the violent shaking I thought it would be. Instead, it felt like the ground was rolling. The trees were swaying back and forth even though there was no wind and the puddles of water in our backyard were moving side to side. It was such a strange experience. Everything was just kind of swaying.
After a minute or so it ended and we rushed inside to get a hold of Alex, who was staying at a friend’s house. The phone lines were all down for a while, first because of the earthquake and then because of the overload of people trying to make calls. I made sure to call my sister back who I was sure was probably having her own little heart attack after my frantic hangup. I did eventually get a hold of Alex and all was fine there as well.
I’m so happy to say that we’re all fine and it seems that for the most part the quake wasn’t too destructive. A few buildings had damage so far as has been reported. Sadly, six people lost their lives on the road between the epicenter and Bogotá because of falling rock and landslides. The official strength is listed at 5.7 on the richter scale. The epicenter is less than 35 miles from our house.
Here’s Maggie’s account of the situation…
“It was my first earthquake and at first I thought that I was just shaking the desk on accident, but then when I took the headphones off, my dad and a friend were walking around and my dad said, “Get out of the house!” and that’s when I started getting worried because everything was moving back and forth a lot. I think God protected me in that earthquake because if it would have been stronger, the desk could have fallen on top of me because it was swaying so much.” ~Maggie
~Tona