Taiwan 2024 - Northeast Coast, Sculpted Cement Panel / A Real Earthquake

They do a lot of this over in Taiwan - intricate cement sculptures or panels with words and a drawing or two. (see this post of one captured in a temple)  According to the Google translator on my iPhone, the top line says "The beauty of Guishan Island", and underneath, "Leaning Tail and Mole Tail" (?).

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Guishan Island happens to be Turtle Island.  This is because of its profile, which that day we could barely make out through the haze from the shore.  Just so happens, however, that we were among the last to be able to see the turtle shape of the island, because just a few days after we returned to our mountain home in Tzuqi a huge (7.4) earthquake tore through the region and a large portion of it collapsed into the ocean.  Two more days on the Northeast Coast and we would have witnessed the thick of the destruction, but where we were after returning to the village it was only about a 4.0.

We'd been through small earthquakes and tremors before in Taiwan...the kind where you're in a building and the light fixtures will sway but not much else.  So when, at 3:30 in the morning on April 3rd, I heard a text come in from the President (the President's Office sends these out whenever a disaster is potential or imminent) I didn't think much of it.  In my sleepiness I felt our bed sort of bounce around but thought that it was either my imagination or just another tremor that we regularly experience over there.  So I went back to sleep.

Later in the morning we'd just had breakfast and were getting ready for one of our daily hikes on the mountainside.  I was outside tying my shoes when, at 7:58 a.m., two things happened at once:  another text came in from the President, and a rumbling sound started.  It got louder and louder, and as the rumbling increased the ground started to shake.  The shaking got worse, and the ground even began to move not only up and down but also laterally a bit.  The doors across the street - the kind of roll-ups made for businesses - were closed and could be seen bowing in and out, making a loud racket as the ground and building surrounding them swayed by several inches in all directions.  Chenjean was in the shower and had to hold onto a towel rack so she wouldn't fall down.

Now THIS was different!  The whole episode lasted what seemed a long time, but was probably just a minute or so.  That is a LONG minute, however, when the very ground under your feet is suddenly unstable and bouncing around.  You stand or walk on the ground, and expect it to stay right where it is.  Not this day...

Not more than 30 seconds after it was over we went inside and saw the coverage had already started on national TV.  Turns out it was the biggest earthquake on the island in 25 years, and that's saying something.  We were fortunate to not be traveling to or from the Northeast Coast that day, because some of the very tunnels we went through just days before collapsed and trapped many people inside.

So was it over on April 3rd?  Hardly.  A day later we traveled to Chiayi, which was much harder hit by the quake, and spent the night in a hotel.  Now Chiayi is a fair-sized city so the buildings in town ranged anywhere from three to twenty floors in height.  Our hotel happened to have fourteen, but we were on the twelfth floor close to the top.  A little after 2:00 a.m. an aftershock struck and swayed the building so badly that things were falling off the shelf in the bathroom, and my roommate (DeQuan) thought we'd topple over like some of the buildings we'd seen on television over on the East Coast.  I slept through it all, probably even better because of the swaying motion, like I do on cruise ships.

So there you have it - our first real earthquake, and it was a doozy.  Thanking God that we weren't literally thrown into the worst of it on those days.