Earthquake

My last post seems so ironic now. It was written two days before a devastating 8.9-9 magnitude earthquake struck Japan off of the coast of Sendai. It has been a little more than a week since the quake struck and life has been turned completely upside down. I need to write about this so I don't forget. It just all still seems so surreal. I never thought I would live through a natural disaster, national state of emergency, and military evacuation... Here are some of my thoughts throughout this situation:

Friday March 11th

I was taking a nap in my bedroom with Lilia and I had woken up. She was still asleep and I was just laying there not wanting to disturb her and thinking about... I can't remember. Maybe the English class I was supposed to teach in about an hour. At about 2:45pm the bed started shaking and then the lamps started to shake too. I have experienced numerous earthquakes in my time here so I didn't think too much of it at first, but then it got stronger and it kept going. I heard creaking sounds and people shouting outside. Lilia woke up with a horrified look on her face and our bed was rocking and shaking more than I have ever felt before. I thought it might fall apart. I held Lilia to me and told her it would be ok over and over again. I think I was telling myself too, because the shaking wasn't stopping and I was beginning to feal frightened. Usually earthquakes around here last about 30 seconds to a minute or so. This one went on and on. I have heard that it was over three minutes, but maybe even 4 where we were. The whole house was creaking and books were falling off of shelves. Finally I got us out of the bed and went into the hallway where there were no windows or pictures on the wall. The shaking stopped and I carried Lilia around the house to assess damage. We had nothing break. Picture frames were all askew on the walls and some had fallen down. A few books had fallen. Wow! I thought! That was totally crazy! I jumped on Facebook to announce that that was by far the largest quake I had ever felt. I had no idea what it meant for others further away at this point. My friend Leia came over about 15 minutes later and told me she didn't want to be alone. "Can I hang out with you for a bit?" "sure!!" I told her I would have to pick up my English student soon, but she was more than welcome to join me. We felt an aftershock before we left. It was strong too. We headed out to my car and drove off base to pick up Minako. She wasn't there. She is never late. I decided to wait for 10 minutes and then go back home. When she didn't show we came back home and I had received a very curt e-mail from her saying that she had to cancel. Leia and I stayed together and then decided to go out to dinner. We didn't feel like cooking. We went to eat and experienced further aftershocks at the restaurant. Everyone was on edge. After we finished eating I went home and made some phone calls and checked my e-mails. At first the earthquake was labeled as a 7.4 or so but the number climbed and climbed. There were tsunamis and further warnings. I was sick with worry over Cliff who had left for deployment the day before and his ship was due to pull out of Yokosuka that afternoon. When I heard about the first tsunami I frantically called the XO's wife to see if anyone knew if his ship had gotten out to sea! They had and I relaxed a little. I spent the evening watching the horror of this disaster unfold. We had aftershocks throughout the night. I was in disbelief.

To be continued....