Earthquake – tripleRIN

This morning, we were awoken by Milk Tea’s barking. Then we realized she was barking because the sliding door was rattling due to the earthquake that was shaking the entire building. I picked her up and held her to calm her down, all the while without moving from my lying position haha.

Being woken up by earthquakes is nothing unusual; it has happened many times before, so we were unfazed. We usually wait for it to pass before falling asleep, but today, the tremors were unusually long. I decided if it still continued or got stronger, I’ll (reluctantly) get out of bed to investigate and see if we should panic. Thankfully it soon stopped and all of us happily promptly fell back into slumber.

That’s the reality of how we treat earthquakes (at least in this house lol).

Ideally, we should have gotten out of bed and under it, because during earthquakes, most people are injured by falling objects. Also ideally, we should also have left the main door ajar so that we can secure an exit route as during severe tremors, structures can get bent out of shape and get jammed.

But earthquakes occur pretty frequently and honestly, who has the energy to carry out all the precautions? After the 3/11 incident, we did it for every tremor we felt – running to the main door to open it, and in a safe place, waiting with trepidation for the tremor to pass – and it was actually pretty stressful.

When I woke up hours later (thankfully not by earthquakes or barking) to see many messages from concerned family and friends asking if there was an earthquake in Tokyo and if we were ok. I was surprised – why did this earthquake make news? Then I discovered it was because it was a 6.9 magnitude earthquake, and it was at the place where wounds are still healing – Fukushima.

Tsunami warnings were issued, but fortunately, they were all lifted hours later.

Let’s hope that there will not be another terrible earthquake for years and years and years to come.