TRAVEL | NATURAL DISASTERS

I’m No Prophet But I Knew Something Really Bad Was Coming

I woke up to a trembling room and felt my unease grow stronger and stronger

My daughters and me on an Indian beach some years later. Author’s photo.

There’s nothing a young mother of a toddler needs less than to be poked awake from a peaceful sleep at 6.30 am. So you can probably imagine the reaction I was ready to give my partner as I felt him nudge me urgently at that early hour. But I didn’t get that far. Blinking at him through the bright morning light, his eyes told me something wasn’t right.

“Can you feel the bed shaking?” he asked.

I wasn’t awake enough to be able to feel anything other than a foggy brain, so I had no clue what he was talking about until I forced my head off the pillow. And then I felt it; the bed wasn’t just shaking, it was positively rocking. I looked over to the plastic bath tub in the far corner, still full from my daughter’s bath the previous evening. It looked like a miniature sea in a storm, the waves were that big!

There was no doubt. This was an earthquake. And the last place anyone wants to be when an earthquake happens is on the top floor of a 15-storey building. Which was exactly where we were.