Earthquakes

The second earthquake to be felt in Mexico City since I got here just happened a little more than an hour ago.  We're okay--just a little seasick and we don't have any electricity.  Before living here, I had only felt an earthquake once, and I didn't realize what it was at the time.  With these, there is no doubt as to what is happening.  I'm sitting on the couch, which is where I usually work with my laptop or whatever I'm writing on or reading.  Doug was at the table, which is where he works.  I felt a sharp jolt, like the wall behind me had been hit by something.  The walls are poured concrete, probably highly reinforced because we are on the first floor of a six-story building, so I'm imagining that it would take a wrecking ball swung by a crane to make the wall feel what I felt.  Then the couch moved.  I said to Doug, "The couch just moved."  And then it kept moving.  I said again, "The couch is moving."  "We're having an earthquake."  It's really hard to estimate time in a situation like that, but the movement went on for a while.  The floor was sort of rolling under us.  We had both gotten under the table--I'm not sure why getting under the table is a good idea, except that it's supposed to protect you from falling objects or glass. 

This is standing just outside our door

After it seemed to have stopped (actually, we couldn't tell whether it had or not!)  we got out from under the table and collected up our cellphones and coffee and headed outside where people were gathering.  We live in a building that is very modern in style.  The front of it is black cut stone up to about 15 feet above the street and then glass above that.  One wall of our living room is glass--four glass doors that can be opened and folded back to make the room open to a narrow terrace.  Likewise, one wall of our guest bedroom is glass and also can open by sliding.  Suddenly as I'm sitting four feet from the window in the living room, a building that has a glass side doesn't seem like such a great idea.  Even worse is that when we leave our apartment, the door opens into the interior courtyard of the building--which has exterior stairs and walkways leading to the apartments on the upper floors.  One of these metal and wood walkways is above our door, so that's kind of scary in an earthquake.  There also is a rather large tree suspended about 30 feet in the air on this end of the building.  It's an interesting way to have some green inside the courtyard.  Again, though, it's kind of scary to have that hanging there where we have to walk under it--not exactly under the tree but under the heavy cables from which it is suspended.  Then the entry way to the building is glass on two sides.

This is looking up at the tree of death if it falls in an earthquake!

We went out to the street where, as I said, people were gathering.  Our street is an avenue with one lane in each direction and a wide median which has a sidewalk down the middle and plantings of tall trees and other shorther trees, bushes, and plants that we grow as houseplants in Ohio.  We hung out there for 10-15 minutes while the building was checked out by the maintenance guy and the doorman.  The power came back on after a couple of hours, but after the last earthquake in December, it was out until the next day. 

Now that the power--and internet connection--is back, I've heard from quite a few people here in Mexico, in the US, and in Sweden and England.  As far as we can tell, friends here are okay.  There seem to be some mostly minor injuries here in Mexico City from bricks falling and such.  The epicenter was a couple hundred miles from here, but Mexico City is highly affected by earthquakes because it is built over what used to be a lake and the fill over the lake bed is not incredibly stable.  (Some of the really old buildings in the central historic area quite noticeably lean from past earth movements.)  CNN is reporting that this is the strongest earthquake to hit Mexico City (variously reported as 7.4 to 7.8) since the 8.1 quake of 1985.  That one toppled many buildings and killed about 10,000 people.  Knowing that is part of what is anxiety-producing.