Earthquake Day: 112

I puttered around a little bit once I got home. I had some chips leftover from the party the night before so I got them out, put on a movie with no meaningful plot that I didn't care if I finished (I'll never think of Cars the same way...) and munched. I had Peter with me. I'd felt bad about not letting him sleep with me all weekend and had been much disappointed when I couldn't spend the evening with him on Monday. But when I'd gotten back he had been so rambunctious and I so tired that I couldn't let him sleep with me. So today I was determined to spend some quality time with the poor fellow. So he was nestled in beside me/on top of me/sneaking up on my chips/rooting around my feet pretending that he didn't know how much it tickled/etc. After a while I had finished my chips and was almost asleep when he suddenly bolted from the room.

There was a deep rumble and the bed started shaking. The first thought that went through my mind was, “There aren't earthquakes in Haiti!” Surely somebody would have mentioned that if there were, right? It was then that everything started shaking. It was obvious that the walls and the floor and the whole room was moving. I have to admit that it sounded so much like a truck rumbling past with far greater than usual effect on our building. For a second I wondered if a particularly huge truck had somehow ran through the wall and hit the building. I heard glass shattering all over the place. The bed was jerking back and forth so violently that it was all I could do to stay upright on my hands and knees, limbs spread as wide as possible. The only thing it could possibly be was an earthquake, as improbable as that seemed. I never thought I'd ever be in an earthquake, really. The kinds of places they are common are not places I have ever wanted to go, for reasons having nothing to do with seismic activity. I thought for a moment about finding a more secure place to go to. I have no hallways in my house and the bathroom didn't sound safe at all, what with all the sounds of glass falling. I was well away from the window in my bedroom and felt that the best thing would be to get under the bed itself. But it was pitching so wildly that I wasn't sure I could get off without simply rolling off. So I stayed, spread out on all fours on the bed, and rode it out. Riding is the best word for it, too. It felt like surfing, struggling to keep balance and position on my bed as it bounced and knocked around.

I didn't really look around much but it was the walls that scared me. The whole building was moving and, for some reason, that disturbed me. I did my best to keep track of how long it was and the whole thing seemed to be less than ten seconds or so. It is so hard to describe the effect that those ten seconds had on me, or on all of us. It was terrible and powerful and, for me at least, amazing, all at the same time. Like I said, I'd never thought I would experience an earthquake and, as I've said, everything interests me.

When it stopped, the first thing I noticed, which I had actually noticed shortly after the shaking started, was the gas tanks outside. They had been knocked over and apparently broken because white clouds of gas were billowing everywhere. I know that one of the greatest dangers of earthquakes is fires from the broken gas lines, so I that sight terrified me. I ran out as quickly as I could, barely thinking to throw on my sandals because of all the glass I had heard breaking. The door I normally use opens up into the laundry room, which is also where all the batteries and electrical equipment is for the three apartments in my building. When I came out, the gas was already coming in a cloud down into the room. The inverters for my house and the apartment upstairs are right next to that door and I was sure we were all about to go up in a fireball. I ran to the other door from the laundry room, which is a gate that's kept shut with a padlock. The lock usually isn't locked, just pulled through the rings, but I always have the hardest time getting it open, just because there is very little space between it and the wall. It probably came off faster than I've ever done it before but it still seemed to take forever. I don't know much about gas (other than the chemical make-up, and whatever) because I've never had gas before, that I've ever had to do anything with, and I didn't really know what to do. But I yelled “gas, gas” to the guards who were right there, and pointed, and ran up to where the tanks were. There was a huge cloud hanging in the air and it was difficult to breathe. Pierre, one of the guards, ran up and just turned the valves on the tanks. Thankfully, that was all that was needed, only the lines were broken.

I had run into Cathy on her way down the steps as I was running to check on the gas tanks. She seemed fine at that point. I had gotten a glimpse of some people on the soccer field so I went down that way. There were various sounds coming over the walls, screams and cheers and wails. I ran into Steve Hersey, the school's director, who was running up from the administration building to check on the gas tanks. I told him they were taken care of but he turned off the ones at the snack shop (our “cafeteria”) and double-checked the ones by the apartments. We should have gone across the street to check on the ones at the other apartments but we didn't think of that until later. Steve explained that he had gone through many earthquakes while growing up in Japan, so he knew just what to do. He mentioned the thing about fires being the greatest danger, too.

At some point after the initial scare about the gas I felt a certain exhilaration of having been through it. I was a little awed. Or maybe a lot awed. I had seen nothing in my own house but from the outside nothing really seemed amiss except the fallen canisters. I had no idea yet of the destruction that had been caused. Having had nothing to compare to, I didn't know the strength of the earthquake. I assumed that statistically, most earthquakes are minor, especially in areas not known for quakes. So I figured that it had been a relatively minor tremor and was a little excited. I wanted to be sure that the kids were all ok, but it didn't occur to me at this point that there was going to be any real damage, beyond broken dishes. Well, as we were checking the gas tanks, Steve told me that he was sure it was at least a 6 or 7 earthquake. As he said, he knew about such things from growing up in Japan so I believed him. I was shocked. Of course, it had been a tremendous amount of shaking and for what seemed like a very long time. Even I knew that earthquakes weren't supposed to last for ten seconds. I could hardly take it in. Not only had we had an earthquake, but it had been an incredibly strong one. This was a serious, world-class natural disaster.

I went out to the field and looked around but everyone seemed to be ok. They looked to be milling around for the most part. Many kids were actually yelling in excitement and running. I turned back, following Steve. Tony DeKoter, the elementary principal, was out by the main gate now and he and Steve went outside to look around. There were a lot of people out on Delmas 75, as usual, and there were a variety of reactions. Some people were yelling or chanting, others had their hands lifted in prayer. A few were crying. Most people were still too much in shock to really be reacting. Most people were simply standing around, doing nothing. They didn't know how to feel or what to do about what had happened. There was some damage immediately obvious. The wall across the street had fallen and was blocking half the road. There was a man about thirty feet away whose shirt was covered with blood.

Miquette Denie, the school nurse and biology teacher, came running past me as I stood in the gate. She took a cell phone from one of the guards and tried, unsuccessfully, to make a call. I assumed she was trying to get help for the injured man I saw and he didn't look critical to me. I started to walk out but turned and went back to the field. Nichole Steiner was there, along with Sean and Denise Blesh, having been watching the kids who were trying out for soccer that day. There were a lot of kids at the school when it happened. There was a basketball practice in addition to soccer tryouts. Those are the big sports at the school so, naturally, tons of kids were there.

At first it seemed that people weren't afraid or worried. Most of the kids I saw looked more excited than anything else. I admit, I felt more excited than anything else. Of course I understood how dangerous and destructive an earthquake would be and had respect for the gravity of the situation, but I was full of adrenaline and the energy of the situation. One student ran up to me with a big smile on his face and said, “Can you believe it, Mr. Kulpa? An earthquake! Isn't it great?” As I said, excitement. But it did not take long for the tone to become much more somber.

Nichole asked me if I had talked to Axel, a 10th grader. She was on campus for soccer but her younger brothers were at home and her parents were out of the country, so she was incredibly worried about them. That was when we realized that the phones were not working. Of course, everyone was probably trying to call someone right then, so of course the phone systems would be down. And that was assuming the cell towers had not been damaged. Once you started really looking, many students were frantically trying to call relatives and a few were huddled together for support, even crying.

We stood around for a long time. People were getting very frustrated that the phones were not working. Some of the administrators came outside and they were more upset than those who had been on the field. A few students who had been on the basketball court told me that they had huddled together in the middle of the court and that the building directly across the street had entirely collapsed before their eyes. Then, the teachers who live across the street came over, Katie Marusic and Jaime Kuhnle They had only seen the fallen wall but they had stopped to help a man whom the wall had fallen on. Actually, they had been with Miquette, who had helped him. He had been badly injured by the impact and Miquette had performed CPR on him but had not been able to resuscitate him. That was what finally caused the horror of it to settle in on me. I could hardly believe it, how tragic and terrible it was. I do not think I could handle something like that. My friends had stood there and watched a man die. What more devastating experience could you go through? We were all to find out.