Early morning nerve shaking experience

I woke up this early morning because I felt something different. It was neither my daughter moving nor my husband changing his sleeping position; it was the bed and the door moving. I turned to my daughter’s side, wrapped her with my arms and moved her to the center of the bed. I had to shake my hubby to wake him up (imagine how worried I am already but he was still in a deep sleep huh!). The door was still moving. He looked at me and asked why. I cried in panic “lumilindol, di mo ba nararamdaman!” He turned towards Jade still in a deep sleep and uttered “oo nga!” We lay still hugging each other with our arms wrapped around our precious Jade. I looked around and felt another movement and the door produced a slight banging sound again. Dennis tried to calm me by saying it is ok but for me nothing is ok. My earthquake experience has left caused me a deep trauma that even a slight ground shake will make me cry. Questions like what to do, where to go, what’s next, how to deal with this if it wouldn’t stop, and all things like that ran into my panicked mind. I don’t even remember if I asked for God’s protection. Then after a couple of minutes that seemed like an hour to me, our surroundings calmed down. I didn’t move, I continued to look around hoping that the ground has really calmed. It did! The next thing I heard is “it’s really ok now, go back to sleep.” I looked at my watch, saw time is a little past 2, slowly turned Jade back into her “territory” and continued to hug her while I stared at the curtains and eventually I got back to sleep.

One of the first things I did in office this morning was to check the news and figured out that the earthquake’s magnitude is 6.6 and it took place at 1:52AM. It was followed by another with a magnitude of 5.7 at 1:55AM. The epicenter is in Hualien City found in the middle part of Taiwan. We are in Taipei, northern part of Taiwan and we felt the earth moved significantly. It must really be a strong one. My colleague arrived, asked me if I felt the quake and told me it’s the 3^rd strongest quake after the 1999 killer quake that hit Taiwan. We are very glad the earth didn’t shake any harder.