Where were you? What happened to you? C’mon, spill your guts. 
I was asleep, in bed, on the 4th floor in Taipei. My bed started shaking VIOLENTLY, stuff started to fall off of my bookshelves (in the pitch dark) and I thought the walls were going to start cracking and collapsing. It was pretty damned scary.
Before that, I thought earthquakes were fun.
[quote=“Dragonbones”]I was asleep, in bed, on the 4th floor in Taipei. My bed started shaking VIOLENTLY, stuff started to fall off of my bookshelves (in the pitch dark) and I thought the walls were going to start cracking and collapsing. It was pretty damned scary.
Before that, I thought earthquakes were fun.[/quote]
I think many of us can just copy DB’s post above!
I was asleep, in bed, on the 3rd floor in Taipei. My bed started shaking VIOLENTLY, stuff started to fall off of my bookshelves (in the pitch dark) and I thought the walls were going to start cracking and collapsing. It was pretty damned scary.
Before that, I thought earthquakes were fun.
[quote=“Tigerman”]
I think many of us can just copy DB’s post above!
I was asleep, in bed, on the 3rd floor in Taipei. My bed started shaking VIOLENTLY, stuff started to fall off of my bookshelves (in the pitch dark) and I thought the walls were going to start cracking and collapsing. It was pretty damned scary.
Before that, I thought earthquakes were fun.[/quote]
A lot of you in DB’s bed that night, TM?
[quote=“irishstu”][quote=“Tigerman”]
I think many of us can just copy DB’s post above!
I was asleep, in bed, on the 3rd floor in Taipei. My bed started shaking VIOLENTLY, stuff started to fall off of my bookshelves (in the pitch dark) and I thought the walls were going to start cracking and collapsing. It was pretty damned scary.
Before that, I thought earthquakes were fun.[/quote]
A lot of you in DB’s bed that night, TM? [/quote]
My tale is exactly the same as Tigerman’s but different beds and locales. I was in Yong He.
HG
[quote=“Dragonbones”]I was asleep, in bed, on the 4th floor in Taipei. [/quote]I was there too 
Me too. In Hsintien.
Not really. I was part of a small team of elite cavers and scientists who were on an expedition to the geographical centre of the Earth. We were about 4,000 metres underground and having just defeated the mightly and previously unknown to science kraken in his lair – well, it was me, really, the others just watched – we were having a well-earned rest and a Kitkat, when the ground started to shake VIOLENTLY, stuff started to fall off of the walls (in the pitch dark) and I thought the cave walls were going to start cracking and collapsing. It was pretty damned scary.
Before that, I thought earthquakes were fun.
I left Taipei for my honeymoon on 919. Saw it all on the news and read all about the power outages, water shortage etc in the newspaper. Didn’t come back to Taipei until the power and water was turned back on. I heard stories of people that had to climb many flights of stairs to get their office without any AC. Was that right, was that what the aftermath was like, or am I thinking of some other disaster in Taiwan.
That was right, the electricity was off for a couple of days immediately afterwards, and for the next 2 weeks was only on at certain times of day on a rotating basis.
Think yourselves lucky. All we had were miner’s lamps and candles.
I was going over my story in head. I was in Taichung 50km from the epicenter on the tenth floor with a 7 month pregnant jdspouse.
It was horrible and I would prefer not talking about it anymore, but have in a previous year’s 921 thread. Oddly I thought it was a faded memory but the feeling hasn’t faded much at all.
Them were some powerful shimmies. 
[quote=“Tigerman”]
I think many of us can just copy DB’s post above!
I was asleep, in bed, on the 3rd floor in Taipei. My bed started shaking VIOLENTLY, stuff started to fall off of my bookshelves (in the pitch dark) and I thought the walls were going to start cracking and collapsing. It was pretty damned scary.
Before that, I thought earthquakes were fun.[/quote]
Haha! I knew some smart cookie would try to make a joke of that… but, if one reads carefully, one will note that DB’s bed is on the 4th floor… my bed is on the 3rd floor. Obviously not the same bed.
Sheesh… 
I’m always on top! 
Too much information. 
Interesting the comments though…I guess the geology under your feet really makes a difference in how quakes feel. The folks in Taipei all describe their junk falling off of shelves, violent shaking, etc…
We didn’t have any of that, and I’m located closer to the epicenter than the Taipei residents. What we had were massive, but slow undulations like waves. Ground floor.
The first aftershock was really violent. Straight up and down for at least 40 seconds. This was the one that sent everything crashing to the floor for us. I didn’t lose a single item off a shelf during the initial quake.
I was asleep, in bed, on the 3rd floor in Taipei. My bed started shaking VIOLENTLY, stuff started to fall off of my bookshelves (in the pitch dark) and I thought the ceiling was going to start cracking and collapsing. It was pretty damned scary.
Before that, I thought earthquakes were fun.
I was living on the same street as the hotel that collapsed in Taipei. As we ran to a nearby park to get away from tall buildings, other people were pointing in the direction of the hotel and telling us how they’d seen fire and smoke soon after the earthquake hit. I visited the site the next day and watched with thousands of others as the fire brigade used cranes and buckets to pull out bodies - some alive; some not.
Two days later, a friend and I rented a van and helped ship emergency supplies from Taipei City Hall into the hardest-hit areas. We were given signs to put in our front and back windows so we could use the hard shoulder without being stopped by police - bloody glad about that, because the motorway was chocka all the way.
We stopped at a small town on the way, and it was incredible sight; buildings all around were tilting. Some had only the bottom two or three floors collapsed, often crushing cars parked on front. Roads were buckled and bridges were destroyed, and we found ourselves having to go off-road in areas where emergency volunteers had been killed just the day before. Every time we stopped, we would be approached by people asking for food and water, or tents and blankets.
We ended up at a school, where a makeshift camp had been set up for those whose homes had been destroyed. We unloaded most of the goods and entertained the kids for a while, who were all in remarkably good spirits considering their plight. We were asked if we’d like to stay and help out some more, so we drove to a nearby stadium and helped a group of soldiers and civilians unload trucks as they arrived. Huge mountains of blankets, tents, water, and noodles soon formed.
We worked into the night, and in the early hours were taken to a carpeted office to get some sleep before sun up, when we would be taking supplies up into the epicentre. We slept surprisingly well before being woken by the sunlight streaming into the room. We were given coffee and bread, which we devoured happily while watching helicopters land, load up, and take off in rapid succession. I felt like I was in MAS*H.
We were given a guide/translator and told to follow another vehicle. The journey was treacherous, and seemed to take forever, as the roads were half collapsed and extremely narrow, or half-blocked by boulders, particularly on the climb up into the mountains. We had to cut our mission short, as we were informed upon arrival at a police station that the road ahead was completely unnavigable, and we were forced to unload our goods and store them there until those trapped at a higher elevation could be reached.
Seeing all that devastation was something I will never forget. I grew up thinking that buildings were our castles, and protected us from harm. BUt the buildings we saw had turned into death traps, and we could only imagine the lives lost as we passed building after building that had collapsed or toppled over. But the resilience of the people was incredible, and I was in awe of how they were able to get on with life so soon after the disaster.
I still have the photos from that trip, and really must get them uploaded before I lose them.
Here’s hoping we don’t see another like that in our lifetime. That was scary!
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Asleep in bed in Puli. First wave woke my wife and me. The second one started in, and it was BIG - I know you’re supposed to hide under a table or in a doorway, but all that went right out the window. I remember scooping up our two-year old, and just making it out of our house before the ground felt more liquid than solid. We all ended up on the ground as the felt as though it was going up and down, instead of side to side like average quakes. All lights went out, so we couldn’t see what was happening as much as listen to to the crashing all around us. It felt like it really wouldn’t end. After it was finally over, we sat in our neighbor’s car listening to the radio to hear what had happened. It really wasn’t until the next morning when we could see how bad it really was. One wall of our house had pulled off the foundation, our TV and refrigerator door had had traded places on opposite sides of the house, and pretty much everything was trashed. The loss of much of our stuff was less of an issue as the nearly constant aftershocks, though. Remeber how long those went on? Months of nearly daily tremors - that really wore down on us.
No power, no water, no telephone for four days to let my family in the states know we were all right. I remember Tzu-chi being in town handing out water and supplies by something like noon the next day - what was that? Nine hours after the event? They beat the army here! Aid came in fast, people helped out, I didn’t see any looting, though I heard there was a little. Everyone here was amazingly helpful, resourceful, and genuinely kind. I can rag on about locals with the best of them, but I’ve also seen acts of compassion and kindess that I never thought possible from the people here. It was an amazing time.
Holy crap. I was about to tell about my terrifying experience living in Taichung but…
I drove through what was left of Puli two days later. You are a lucky man as i’m sure you know.
I also drove through Sun Moon Lake a couple of weeks later. Pretty badly damaged as well. Rooms were damn cheap though.
I slept in a park a couple of days because I was scared that one of the aftershocks were going to knock my building down.
I had only been in Taiwan for two weeks. 9/21 was the first night that I had an apartment of my own. It was truly shocking.
Wow. I have been in Taiwan for more that 7 years now!
some amazing stories.
Nothing flash here; i’d been in taiwan about 18 months and was living near Miaoli. All got pretty shook up but no buildings went down in the county.
remember the next morning riding all over miaoli to visit friends and see what was damaged… had to look at everything three times and think hard if was like that b4 the quake or was just more taiwan style art deco!
Hehe - right after I wrote that, I thought to myself, “Damn, when did I get so old?”
5th floor in Taichung.
Convinced that I was about to die, thinking “Ceiliing? Floor?”
Look up, look down.
Me: “I know that one of you is going to let go and kill me, I just want to see it happen.”
Look up, look down.
Got out of town and into shelter at some commune that my German roommate was a member of, way out in the middle of the rice paddies. There, no longer surrounded by tall buildings that might collapse, I cheered myself by reflecting on the many unappreciated virtues of flat, stable places… like Sasketchewan.