What have you done the past four days?
A 39 year old mother, her two year old son, and her three year old daughter were unburied and rushed to hospital in Japan.
They had been buried under a landslide, in a van since Saturday.
As rescuers dug them out another earthquake measuring 6.1 hit the Nagaoka area.
Four days. Buried alive.
31 people died in the Saturday quake.
Update: The mother has died, the little girl is still trapped. Japanese tv is carryig the rescue attempt live.
Update: 28/10/04 The rescuers didn’t reach the little girl in time.
The region has been hit with over 500 aftershocks since Saturday.
Every so often, I’ve been throwing out a random prayer for the folks in Japan. I’ve lived through a couple of 6.8 quakes in SoCal – the sound is permanently etched into my brain. When you are only 6 miles or so from the epicenter, the sound of the quake coming is like waking up to the headlights of a freight train bearing down. It sounds like jumbo jets crashing on the pavement. And then there are the little sounds in the sudden silence before the next aftershock – the sound of glass breaking as it falls off shelves, the sound of flying books hitting the walls, the sounds of other around you (or even you yourself) screaming in panic and fear. The sounds of the powerlines slapping against each other, arcing and sparking and then going silent as the lights go out – and all these sounds happening in what must be the longest minute in history – and then it starts again.
After Northridge, I remember when they were desparately trying to dig out the inhabitants of one apartment building that had collapsed into its ground floor garage. I remember the crews digging out the maintenance worker who had been in the parking structure of the mall when it collapsed. I remember the man whose car engine sparked a gas explosion, who was so in shock that he walked miles before someone took him to the hospital for treatment of his 2nd and 3rd degree burns.
I can’t watch news footage of quakes. I don’t have to imagine – I can remember. And we took minimal real damage ourselves.
I’ve been in a couple of small ones with very minor damage.
Psychologists say of all the natural disasters earthquakes are the most psychologically difficult.
Your memories are vivid and descriptive and I’m sorry you went through that.