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Aftershocks felt in Hudson / 2001 graduate lives through China's powerful quake
July 9, 2008
by Amadeus Smith
Reporter
Hudson -- When Connie Miyajima thought her son might have been caught in the devastating earthquake in China last month, she could only think of one thing: the caption under a photo of him with a baby panda posted on a photo-sharing Web site that read, "I can check off one more thing I have to do before I die."
The quake shakes
the dorms
Connie's son Rick, 25, graduated from Hudson High School in 2001. He's currently a student at Sichuan University in Chengdu, which is in the Sichuan Province of China.
Around 2 p.m. May 12, Rick was getting ready to hop in the shower. The running water muddled the rumbling sounds coming from outside.
At first, Rick couldn't figure out what the thunderous sounds were, his dorm floor now shaking.
He went through a half-dozen explanations before realizing it was an earthquake.
Rick said he began to get flashes of words in his head -- "basement," "doorway" -- the words preached so many times during tornado drills at school when he was growing up. The words appeared in his mind in "bright neon letters," he said.
He stood in the doorway of his first-floor dorm room, stabilizing himself by pushing his arms and legs against the frame of the door. While nothing was falling out of cabinets or off the walls, the windows rattled violently.
"My friends on the third floors and higher had many things fall off their shelves such as dishes and books, and in a few instances entire pieces of furniture fell over completely," he said.
Harley Benz, scientist-in-charge at the USGS National Earthquake Information Center, said the epicenter of the quake was about 50 miles away.
"It (Chengdu) was just far enough away that it didn't see the kind of damage other cities did," he said.
Rick was in the doorway only seconds before he grabbed his cell phone and raced for the door to exit the building. In nothing but sandals and "skimpy shorts," Miyajima joined the crowd gathered outside.
Meanwhile, in Hudson it was around 2 a.m. Connie was asleep -- unaware of the earthquake. She awoke to an e-mail about the event from her sister-in-law Rene Kuwahara.
At first, Connie said, she was calm.
"I thought 'China's a big place, no problem,'" she said.
But after hearing that 900 students were buried in rubble, she became sick, waiting for any word from her son.
Campus to campground
Back in Chengdu, the quake had ended and everyone was in a state of shock, Rick said, except his Japanese classmates who were probably more aware of what was happening.
After being notified there were no known injuries, and that students were asked to leave the dorm until officials determined it was safe to return, Rick got dressed, gathered some belongings and walked the streets with his friends.
Students were telling stories of escape and laughing about their good fortune -- something Rick suspects help deal with fear and confusion.
Traffic was at a standstill, and a sea of pedestrians flooded the streets and sidewalks, some of which were sprinkled with glass from shattered night club windows.
In the calamity, Rick and his friends did the only logical thing they could think to do: grab a beer at one of the campus stores. With beer in hand, Miyajima and his friends made their way through the lawns and fields around campus, which had now begun to fill with homemade tents constructed with tarp, piping and rope.
A threat of flooding from the quake damage forced residents of surrounding areas to take refuge in the flood-free zone. The campers played cards and participated in sing-a-longs as they reflected on the day's events.
The news comes
to the camp
As the people of the Sichuan Province dealt with their own angst, Connie was dealing with her own back in Ohio. Since she didn't speak Chinese, Connie initially didn't know how to figure out what sort of damage the university had taken on.
Eventually, she was at least was able to get word that the school was still standing.
But Connie was still in panic.
"As a mom you feel absolutely helpless when you can't help your kids," she said.
She finally got an e-mail from her son around 2 in the afternoon, eight hours after first hearing of the quake.
By 3 a.m. in Chengdu, the news of the first death toll had come in -- more than 13,000, many of which were school students. The campers' mood became more serious after they saw coverage of the quake.
Rick, lying on a blanket in the lawn, immediately pictured the faces of his former students to whom he taught English last year in Zhuzhou in the Hunan Province.
Now, nearly two months after the earthquake, the campers have returned home and the university is back to normal, he said. Chengdu, which was never officially evacuated, has aftershocks every day.
"It was a confusing and unreal experience," Rick said. "It enabled me to see the best and worst life has to offer in a single month."
E-mail asmith@recordpub.com
Phone: 330 686 3928
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