After the Earthquake

Thank-you so much to everyone who has emailed or called to find out how we are. Here is the story of our lives over the past week, in case you have the time and inclination to read a blow-by-blow account.

I was in the bathroom when an earthquake measuring 7.9 on the Richter scale struck at 2:28 local time last Monday. When the door started rattling I thought at first that our two-year old Sam must be trying to come in. Then I opened the door and realized that the whole building was shaking. Sam’s nanny Long Xiao-yan and our cleaning lady Liu Ying ran towards me, shouting that we should leave but, remembering instructions from the British Consulate, I told them to lie on the floor instead. We huddled down beside the bed and I lay clutching Sam as the building shook vigorously for 3 minutes. With the epicentre less than 100 miles to the north-west we experienced extreme shaking, and were lucky that there was not more damage, for a variety of reasons I found out later.

I remember thinking that we were in the wrong room, right on the outside of the building, but I couldn’t move. Horror stories of women in the Tangshan earthquake watching their children disappear in front of them, from Xinran’s book The Good Women of China, ran through my mind. As the shaking slowed down I said let’s go, and we ran for the door. We didn’t stop to pick up bags or phones or to lock the door, or even to put on shoes. We joined the stream of neighbours pouring down the stairs and the crowd milling about on the grass outside. Leaving the building with Sam in my arms I began to tremble and cry, as I realized what we had just experienced.

People were wandering about in a daze, many half-dressed or wearing pyjamas. Everyone who had a phone was frantically trying to dial family members, but all the circuits were down and no calls could go through. I remembered my friend Cyndi who lives on the 18th floor of one of the high-rise blocks on our compound. Running around the corner I met her coming the other way in tears. The quake had felt even more extreme at her level, and she had fled her apartment with her 5 month-old baby daughter, her 3 year old son and their nanny, as light fixtures shattered overhead. Looking back on it, she now says she can’t even remember the trip down 18 flights of stairs.

One’s first thoughts are for the rest of the family. I was confident Isaac would be safe at his school, which is a new, 3-storey building, but I was concerned about Ethan, whose 6th floor office is in a building that has seen better days. But with no communication possible, there was nothing to do but wait. Our small group headed to the entrance of the housing complex and set up a base on the grass outside the gate, where we hoped the school bus would eventually deliver the older children.

We spent a fretful afternoon there, waiting and trying to gather information. Cyndi had no choice but to climb back up 18 flights of stairs to fetch formula and nappies for the baby, and she brought drinks and snacks back with her. Her daughter Maggie arrived safely in the car and thankfully Ethan arrived on his bike at about 4 o’clock. He had run from his building, which was still shaking as he got outside, but there was no damage. The school bus finally delivered Isaac at about 5:30, an hour and a half late because the streets were clogged with traffic as everyone tried to get home to check on their families, or to leave the city. Isaac had been outside on the playground having a PE lesson when the quake struck, and his teachers had reacted very calmly, so he was not scared at all, rather excited by the whole experience. With the family back together again our attention turned to what to do next. Cyndi and I walked to the nearby shopping centre to look for food. It was closed, but we managed to buy a case of water and ice-creams for everyone.

Back at the compound our neighbours were starting to set up tents for the night, but we decided to first check on friends who live nearby. I rode my bike 10 minutes to their housing complex, China Gardens, and found a small tent city had grown up around the fountain. A group of our friends were there, bottles of wine were being opened and the atmosphere was supportive and relieved as everyone exchanged news and experiences. When I reported back to Ethan and Cyndi we decided to move there too. Several people in China Gardens, including our friends Kim and Jonny Dallas, have houses with ground-floor access and their water had not been cut off as ours had. Cyndi and I walked over with the children, and Ethan went back to the flat to dig out camping equipment. It took him a long time to do this because, as the lines opened up again, the telephone rang off the hook with people enquiring for our safety. Luckily my sister Helen managed to get through from Scotland, so she was able to spread the news around the family that we were safe.

It was dark by the time we set up camp at China Gardens. The children were happy to see their friends and it was helpful to be with a group of other people. Thankfully it was a warm night and we all sat up talking about what had happened and trying to find out more news. Ethan had brought 3 tents so we were able to lend 2 to friends, including 1 to my friend Louise, who was on her own with her 2 young children. Her husband Zhang Shao-hong was in Lhasa, having been part of the team who carried the Olympic torch to the top of Mount Everest. Ethan had a radio and intermittent internet access, so were gradually able to piece the story together. We heard that a school had collapsed and 4 children had died, but at that early stage we had no idea of the extent of the devastation so close by.

Nobody slept much that night. Ethan’s contact information is apparently on a website of NGOs in China, so he started to receive phone calls from media organizations. Throughout the night he took calls from NBC, ABC, the BBC and Good Morning America. The BBC used part of the call in an interview the next day, which was helpful as many of our friends in the UK heard it and knew we were OK. Several of the other networks lost interest when they heard that we were unhurt and had not witnessed death or destruction. Good Morning America called 3 or 4 times through the night and asked Ethan if he would interview other people and take video footage of the scene. They arranged to call again at 6 pm the next day to interview him for the programme but, having kept us awake all night, they never called back.

Towards dawn it began to rain. People closed up their tents or huddled under umbrellas and tried to get some sleep. The rain grew heavier and did not stop for the next 24 hours. It was only an inconvenience for us, but it greatly hampered rescue efforts and increased the misery of those trapped in the earthquake zone. We spent Tuesday either in our tent or at the homes of various friends. Kim and Jonny set up a base camp on their ground floor which became a haven for several castaways from high-rise buildings like us. Traci Perdue and Michael Shelton, another China Gardens family, also gave us shelter that day and dinner in the evening.

Our friends Ingrid and Paddy Booz live on the 13th floor of a building that they already knew did not comply with building codes. They experienced violent shaking and a frightening departure from their building, Ingrid still in her pjs, and when Paddy returned later to fetch clothes, he found a great deal of breakages and buckled floors. They had set off to walk across the city to locate their children and their visitors from Sweden, but ended up buying bikes and riding instead. Having reunited their family they were also based at China Gardens. By some miracle Louise’s husband managed to get on a flight from Lhasa to Chengdu on Tuesday morning and joined his family, although, after 6 weeks sleeping in a tent on Mount Everest, all he wanted to do was go home, and he was not thrilled at the prospect of a night camping out in the rain.

We stayed in China Gardens for the rest of the week, spending more time each day back at our own apartment sorting things out. The skies cleared on Wednesday morning and we were able to dry everything out. That was the first day we went home for more than a few minutes. I spent an hour cleaning the glass from the kitchen floor. A large glass bowl and a couple of beer bottles had smashed and the beer had glued the broken glass onto the floor, so the shards had to be pried up one by one. Apart from that the only noticeable impact was that a heavy bookcase in the study had jumped about 10 inches away from the wall, which now has a long crack in the plaster running down it. Strangely nothing else in the study moved, not even a teapot on a table right next to the bookcase.

That afternoon, Ethan went out looking for water, as his early prediction about water shortages had proved correct. This was the first major panic to take hold of the city, when stories began to circulate that leaks at chemical plants near Wenchuan had contaminated the water supply with ammonia. Amid rumours that the water would be cut off for up to a week, people filled their bathtubs and basins, and rushed to buy up bottled water. By the time Ethan went out shopping, the shelves were bare. At the local wholesale market, police officers were keeping the crowds under control and limiting purchases to one case of drinks per person. Paddy saw a westerner attempting to photograph the scenes of panic in a convenience store being apprehended by irate shoppers, who deleted the pictures from his camera. Ethan came home with a box of sports drink and we filled every container in the house with tap water. At that point I began to lose heart and got on the phone to my travel agent to enquire about tickets. I managed to book flights to Hong Kong for Friday morning for all of us, and got in touch with my friend Ruth, who welcomed us to come and stay.

Later that night the two major telephone companies circulated text messages from the city government, stating that the water supply was safe and sufficient and there was no danger of it being cut off. As the days passed, the government got better at keeping up with the stories and quashing them before panic spreads. It is clear that the response to perceived danger is potentially as big a threat to public safety as any real event. Other rumours have concerned fuel shortages, the spread of disease from the disaster area, the possibility of flooding from unstable dams and of radiation poisoning from nuclear facilities in the disaster region. Despite all of these concerns, I was beginning to feel better about the situation by the end of the week, and decided not to go to Hong Kong. Ethan could not leave because of his work and it felt more important to stay together and try to get back into a routine.

The fear that has loomed largest is that of aftershocks, which continue to shake the city every day. In fact I just had to stop writing for a few minutes because I felt the room shaking again. There have been thousands of these since last Monday, more than more than 150 of them significant. The biggest, measuring 5.7, occurred at 1:08 on Sunday morning, ironically the first night that we spent back at home. Although we were exhausted and sleeping deeply at the time, Ethan and I both leaped out of bed as soon as the tremor began, but by the time we reached the boys’ rooms the shaking had stopped. The boys didn’t even stir. We turned on the television for a while and texted a few friends to see if they were OK. There was a burning smell outside and acrid orange smoke drifting on the air, but before long a thunderstorm started, which seemed to deal with whatever the problem was. We thought about moving back to the tent but, contemplating the torrential rain, we went back to bed.

On Sunday the city government circulated a text message stating, “the Chengdu plain is not in the aftershock region. City residents should be assured that aftershocks will not cause destruction in the Chengdu area.” Although this sounded like good sense, it did not prevent the panic that took hold of the city the following day. On Monday night, provincial television issued warnings that an aftershock of between 6.0 and 7.0 was expected in the next few days. People interpreted this as meaning their homes were not safe, and before long Chengdu was in a greater state of agitation than it had been after the actual event.

From 10:30 pm that night the city was in chaos, as people rushed out of their homes and prepared to spend the night outside. At 11.00 I received an alarmed call from Laura, an American neighbour, telling me to please believe her and just get out of the house as quickly as possible. Ethan was out looking for water again, so I woke up the boys and hustled them down the stairs in the dark. Ethan found us sitting on a bench, Isaac comatose and Sam crying that he wanted to go home. Before long Cyndi joined us. Luckily her nanny had stayed the night to help her in just such an eventuality, so between them they was able to get all the children out of the building. We all stood around in our pajamas wondering what to do. The streets were jammed with traffic and the air was filled with the blaring of horns. Phone-lines were blocked as people frantically texted and called their loved-ones. We were tempted to go home to bed, but it is hard to fight the herd instinct. Everyone else was heading out, carrying bedding and food supplies for the night, preparing to sleep in the one-storey management building or to set up camp in the gardens. In the end, Cyndi went to stay at Kim and Jonny’s house and we set up our tent again.

In an attempt to understand what is going on, Ethan has been in contact with his classmate Lind Gee of the US Geological Survey’s Albuquerque Seismological Laboratory. She explained that aftershocks typically go on for a while, their magnitude decreasing with time, and that the Sichuan earthquake appeared to be following that pattern. But she also said that there is often a largish event late in the sequence: “The general rule of thumb is that the largest aftershock will be one magnitude unit lower than the main shock,” meaning that we can still expect a 6.9 shock to come. The scientific consensus is that it is not possible to predict when this will happen or exactly where on the fault, but most people here are not taking any chances. After living through the past week, and especially having seen so many disturbing images of devastation on television, I share their anxiety. Rather than dissipating, the nervousness seems to be worse this week than last week, when we were all running on adrenalin.

Among my neighbours, there is a wide range of responses to the aftershocks. One couple on the 7th floor of our building, Mr and Mrs Wang, have slept in their apartment since the day of the earthquake. Mrs Wang told me they were confident to sleep at home because this housing complex is well-constructed, and if our building falls down then the whole city will be in ruins, an observation that I do not find especially reassuring. By contrast, Liu Rui-jun, another 7th floor neighbour, camped outside all week with his wife and son. When I bumped into him on the stairs he explained, somewhat defensively, that they enjoy sleeping in a tent and often go camping on holiday.

Peoples’ responses depend partly on their experience of the original shock. Those were inside a high-rise building are more affected than those who were outside at the time. Three days after Monday’s panic, the school are closed and many are still sleeping outside, despite repeated attempts by the city government to calm the situation. Broadcasts on provincial television explaining that Chengdu will not be seriously affected by any aftershocks have not reassured all residents. Sam's nanny Long Xiao-yan and her 11-member extended family were still sleeping in makeshift shelters on Tuesday night, despite heavy rain. “We have heard that there could be another earthquake even larger than the first one, or a big aftershock closer to Chengdu, so we don’t want to take any chances,” she explained. She also told me that the horrific Tangshan earthquake that killed a quarter of a million people was preceded by a minor shock a month or so earlier. People are afraid that the same thing might happen here, although this doesn’t really make sense, considering that a major shock has already occurred, just not right here. Which reminds me of why Chengdu was not affected too badly: an earthquake can only occur on a fault, of course, and Chengdu is not on the fault, although this quake occurred about as close to Chengdu on the fault as possible. Also, the city is on a flood plain, built on earth, whereas the cities closer to the fault are built on rock, which moved more when the fault shifted. The shock also moved in one direction here, so that buildings absorbed it more easily, whereas closer to the epicenter there was shaking back and forth.

Three days later there are still makeshift camps all over the city. But only the relatively well-off have the luxury of camping equipment. In poorer sections of the city, people are sleeping out in the open or under makeshift tarpaulins and theft has become a problem. One day I spoke to a woman who works at Intel, who had come to borrow a tent from the Dallas family. She had spent the week sleeping in the car with her three-week old baby. According to Chinese tradition, mother and baby should not leave the house for the first month after birth. When I asked her about this, she could not hold back tears as she described trying to care for her baby in the back seat of the car, with her mother in the front and her husband and father sleeping on the pavement outside.

But even as they cope with their own difficulties, the people of Chengdu feel overwhelmingly lucky to have escaped so lightly. The inconvenience of sleeping outside in the rain, or not having a working elevator is put into daily perspective by sobering images from the disaster zone. For three days this week the whole country shared three minutes of silence each afternoon to mourn the victims, now confirmed at 41,353 but expected to rise above 50,000. The local and international community has rallied to help the relief effort. Residents have donated cash, blankets, food and water at drop-off points throughout the city. The Bookworm, a western restaurant and cultural venue, is serving as a donation centre and a rallying point for volunteers. Some of Ethan’s staff took his project car up to the region on Monday packed with food and water and he is working on longer-term strategies for rebuilding and relief.

Over the weekend, before the aftershock alarm struck, it seemed that a fragile calm had been restored to the city. The streets were filled with their usual summer bustle, most restaurants and shops were open and many people had returned to work. But, as Monday night’s panic revealed, Chengdu is still reeling from shock, and fraught with nervous anticipation about the immediate future. Everyone is trying to return to normalcy and, at the same time, struggling to process what has happened and prepare for further possible calamity.

The earth is still moving more often than I feel comfortable with, but the focus now is on regaining a sense of normalcy and seeing what we can do to help those whose lives are in ruins. Most of all, like everyone else in Chengdu, I am distressed by the stories of devastation and loss so close to home, and grateful that the quake did not strike harder here, in this high-rise city of 12 million people. We all share the feelings of a 22 year-old woman extracted from the rubble after 3 days, who told her rescuers, “I’m still alive. I’m happy.”