During the Earthquake

When the big earthquake hit I was at work… we only had about 15 kids because school had just gotten out and most were still walking to the youth center. At first the earthquake was just a gentle rolling and had everybody just stay still and calm, then after about 15 seconds it got rough, I told the kids to calmly get underneath a table or in a doorway… kids were diving under the pool table, I had about 5 in the doorway with me… Doors started slamming, I had a hard time standing up because the pitching of the earth was so violent. Ceiling tiles started falling all over the building and parts of the ventilation system came crashing out of the ceiling…

I was talking to the kids the whole time… “Everybody stay calm… its almost over… you guys are doing so good… we are perfectly safe” and inside I am freaking out because this is one of the coolest things I have ever felt. About halfway through the quake we lost power… and then about a minute and half after it started it was over… kind of… over enough to walk and not fall over… we had all the kids grab their coats and go outside… since our ceiling was falling in. Outside a new group of kids had gathered… many had banged up knees from falling while walking because the quake threw them to the ground. Outside it was cold and the ground was wet from melting snow, I had my yoga mat with me and brought that outside. The kids that were freaking out the worst were sitting with me on my mat… mostly with their heads buried in whatever portion of my torso they could find and crying. The rest of the staff was walking around taking roll and comforting the kids as best they could. A lot of the kids were fine however and running around and playing, making silly dances to try to help the scared kids forget. It was so cold outside… and within 20 minutes the first big aftershock came, and during that aftershock we heard crashing like a building collapse… all the kids stopped moving, got really quiet and looked at the staff with pure panic on their faces… I knew I had to keep them calm so I just said it was probably part of the exercise that was going on base (during which explosions are not uncommon) and that seemed to calm them… while I however started to freak out just a little because that was definitely not a good sound. Sitting outside over the next hour we probably had 5 big aftershocks and countless little ones. We of course had to keep the kids out of the building, since we were not sure if the ceiling tiles would hold, and we got a buckle in our floor…

Staying in the building was not something worth risking, so we called all the parents to come get their kids, many were already on the way… some just couldn’t understand why their kid couldn’t stay… umm… our roof is falling in… about an hour and a half after we evacuated the building we got a heated bus to park in our parking lot that we could stick the kids that were left on so we didn’t all freeze to death. About 5:30 or two and half hours after the quake all the kids were with parents or emergency caretakers and we locked down our building and went home to see what was left at our houses …