It was twenty years ago today. The course of my life was changed by a massive earthquake in Taiwan measuring 7.6 on the Richter scale. At about 1:30 am the lights flickered off and on, and I thought: here we go again, another power outage like we had this past summer.
But no. Because all hell broke loose in a jackhammer-like shuddering that lasted, what, sixty seconds? I hung on to the handrail of the staircase in our two-level abode, my wife screaming upstairs in bed. The low bass rumble of a powerful earthquake is difficult to describe. It courses through your soul. After the shaking stopped we scrambled down from our fourth-floor apartment and spent the rest of the night huddled in a courtyard area with our neighbours as the aftershocks rolled through.
A bunch of us camped for a week on a lawn next to a temple, not daring to spend the night inside any building. It seemed like the ground never stopped moving, though it was hard to tell what was real and what was conjured up by the unconscious memory of the lizard brain on high alert. Still, apparently there were 12,911 aftershocks in total over the next month, so maybe our brains weren't playing tricks on us after all.
That was when my wife and I decided we wanted to live in Canada. Now I complain about days with below average cold, about warm seasons that are too short.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Jiji_earthquake
Earthquakes are the worst.
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