Earthquake!

An hour after I had kissed my lovely, enlarging wife goodbye and hopped into the crew van headed for the airport I was sitting in that same van waiting to enter a security checkpoint which allowed access onto the field. In front of us was a string of other vehicles, carrying cargo bound for domestic locations and airport workers. I had my head down reading something rather uninteresting when I felt like I was getting car sick, which was quite puzzling due to the fact we were stationary. My head started whirling and I wondered whether my wife, who’s known for doing such malicious acts, had drugged me again to simply take advantage of me. Sometimes it’s difficult being absolutely irresistible, even when one is married.

So anyway, as I sat there pondering whether or not I’d have to call in sick to work because of my wife’s devious ways, I happened to notice that the vehicles in front of us were swaying back and forth slowly. “Ah, it’s really windy!” I thought…”funny that the leaves aren’t blowing though…hmm”. When the people in the nearby building started pouring out in throngs, many screaming, which I mistook for singing (trust me, it’s easy to mistake the two in China) I really began to wonder what was going on. Then it sank in, the fog lifted and I realized what was happening. “Dude” I said to Spoon (another foreign pilot here) “we’re having an earthquake!”. And then we both stared dumfounded outside as the earth rocked around and high vehicles neared tipping.

We both hopped out of the van with another foreign pilot, Bruce, and marveled at the dizzying experience. Remember the first time you smoked a cigarette or chewed tobacco and your head was swimming around and the dizziness almost left you on the edge of nauseous vertigo? Surely you do if you swallowed the chewing tobacco! I stood for a moment hoping my inner ear would catch up and realized I wasn’t alone in this feeling as I noticed many Chinese workers around me holding their heads as if to stabilize their swaying noggins.

I looked around and got a bit nervous when I noticed the nearby electrical lines and their supports swaying dangerously, causing me to back down the road a bit to remain clear of any potential electrocution, a form of demise that doesn’t appeal to me (though none of them really do I guess).

High above us, looming over the field sat, or rather swung like a large wet noodle, the Air Traffic Control Tower, making me really, really, really glad that I was safely on the ground having only to battle with my own strange vertigo and not more dangerous realities. The lower doors of the airport terminal, and jet-ways swung open around this time and thousands of Chinese passenger poured onto the field, creating quite a spectacle to behold. The tarmac, usually only inhabited by aircraft, baggage carts, fuel trucks and the occasional policeman riding an antiquated bicycle now resembled a huge ant colony, with little black haired Han Chinese swarming everywhere. Not something you see every day.

I immediately tried calling Elizabeth to make sure she was ok, only to find all the phone networks were out of service. I sent failed text message after failed text message to her until they started to go thru, only to leave me more nervous when she didn’t respond. Thankfully a mutual friend who lives next door to our apartment had a phone that was working and relayed, after an hour of nervous uncertainty, that everyone was fine.

The earthquake happened in Sichuan province, one south of Shaanxi, where we live. As I’m sure everyone is aware of now it was quite powerful, measuring around 7.8 on Mr. Richter’s lovely scale. Current estimates place the death toll at around 12,000, but judging from the construction I’ve seen in the older apartment buildings around where we reside, I fear that number will grow significantly in the days to come. While I don’t pretend to be an expert on the matter I can’t help but guessing that the building codes here are just a bit lacking when compared to those in other seismically active areas elsewhere in the ‘modern world’. The news agencies on CCTV are almost comical in their coverage of the story, as they replay the same footage over and over again, with differing musical soundtracks. They absolutely love this technique, one which I came to despair this past winter when an ice storm shut down this nation. That time, and surely again in a few weeks, the government hosted a relief workers awards show, with musical numbers, dancing, singing and men in military uniforms waving snow shovels around rhythmically. Watch out Broadway, Chinese natural disasters are the up and coming theatrical breakthrough. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not laughing at this catastrophe, as I do find it terrible. My heart goes out to all those in Sichuan, where we’d been just 2 weeks ago. The corniness of the government controlled Chinese media just gets me sometimes.

That night, last night, our ground floor apartment turned into the local foreigner hostel, housing around 10 others who weren’t allowed to enter their high rises as of yet. While I sat in a hotel room in Shenzhen, awaiting a flight to Qingdao for a simulator check, Elizabeth managed Hotel Archambault charging fantastic rates that will surely help us reach our retirement goals quickly.
Long story short: We got rattled, but we’re all fine.