A Frightening Experience
I just viewed a fantastic trailer for The Mist by Stephen King and it shook me up! I can’t say I’ve ever experienced anything that frightening and hope I never do. It did bring back a time though when we experienced a large earthquake and had to contend with all the frantic feelings, an evacuation, and the aftermath.
It was in the late 1980’s and I was working for the same company as my mom in Southern California. It was a huge aerospace firm and she worked on one end of the plant and I was on the other. The company ran shuttle buses all day long to get people from one part of the plant to the other it was so large. It was a manufacturing plant but had hundreds of offices and cubicles inside as well. I had a cubicle. I remember one morning sitting at my desk, working, when everything began to shake. This wasn’t the first time I’d felt a quake, but what was different was that there was a rumbling sound and the shaking didn’t seem to be stopping. We all jumped under our desks, adrenaline flowing, and as soon as the shaking did finally stop, we were ordered to evacuate the building. Hundreds of employees all marched out into the parking lots. We stood outside for a couple of hours not really knowing what was going on or how long it would be before we could go back inside.
This wouldn’t have been bad except that I had no idea how my mom was doing, or if she was okay. Her office was in an outbuilding, detached from the main building. Mind you, this was before everybody had cell phones. I had no way to contact her and it was making me very nervous. Everyone was outside just sort of making fun of what was going on and yet I was getting more uneasy not knowing if my mom was okay. Maybe for everyone else, joking about it was a way to stay calm. It was a very uncomfortable feeling. I remember being glad that at least I was outdoors, and it was very nice out so that helped to keep me calm. I’m not sure how well I would’ve done if I was trapped inside of the building, not sure if I would’ve remained calm or not.
After about two hours we were all told the building was being closed for the day until it could be inspected for structural damage. I managed to find my car and drove around to the other side looking for my mom. I recall being so relieved to see her smiling face. She got in the car and we drove home. We had the radio on in the car and discovered that our offices were located very near the epicenter of the quake which explained why we had felt it and heard it the way we did. It was strange that the further we drove away from work, the calmer the people were. Of course, they hadn’t felt the quake as strongly as we had so they weren’t affected by it the way we were.
It was a unique experience, one I can’t say I’d want to repeat.
