My First Earthquake

The terrifying minute and a half when all the skyscrapers in Bangkok swayed

Unless you’ve lived under a rock, you might have heard about the high-intensity earthquake that hit Myanmar. The 7.7-magnitude rumble hit 16 km northwest of Sagaing. Mandalay, Myanmar’s second largest city with nearly 1.5 million people, was the worst hit. The current death toll estimates range from 2500 to 3500 (expected to even to touch 10,000).

More than 1000 km away, the shocks rolled into Bangkok like an underwater punch. It shook more than 11 million people and hundreds of tall high rises stacked close to each other. One under-construction building collapsed, leaving several dead. The quake left everyone scared and the buildings bruised.

Compared to the enormous calamity for Myanmar, Bangkok survived with just a graze.

Like perhaps millions of others, it was the first time I experienced an earthquake. It was among the top three scariest experiences of my life.

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28 March

It was a normal enough Friday. After a morning walk with N and finishing up a call for possible future work, I left late for my usual writing sessions. It was nearly noon when I walked into the Starbucks on the ground floor of Central World, a large mall within walking distance of where I lived, got myself a sandwich and an Americano and settled in to write.

I zone out when I write, so I wasn’t pulled out of my screen until nearly an hour and twenty minutes later when I felt an overpowering wave of dizziness. Was it too much coffee? I wondered if I was going to blackout like I did earlier this quarter (dismissed by the doctors as a “swiss cheese of events” requiring no concern or action on my part).

I gripped the edge of the table to stop myself from crashing. It was a strange sensation — not being woozy but still having the world spin. I sank deeper into my seat, hoping to rest myself into stability. Except, another ten seconds in, it wasn’t stopping, and I realized it wasn’t me. The world was moving.

The ground was swaying back and forth like a swing. The lights above me were swinging. Even as I watched, it rose in intensity, and suddenly, the crowd was moving. I heard panicked murmers, and people began to hurry out.

[Most people seemed to have thought that they had dizziness when the shaking began.]

I had a moment’s indecision. Should I run out, leaving all my things strewn? For whatever reason, I decided to pick them up. I scrambled to gather the assortment I had spread out — my laptop, phone, chargers, and notepad. Getting the charger plug out was comically hard as the room swayed me away from it. Eventually, some good sense prevailed, and I didn’t waste time trying to put them into my backpack; instead, I held them in a pile and ran out. I joined the throngs.

The whole mall was emptying. There were a few shocked screams. Someone bumped into my back, whimpering. Considering the situation, the exodus was orderly enough. There was little to no shoving or pushing.

I had a strange, steady numbness. My movements were calm. It wasn’t until later that I realised how much adrenaline was running.

All this while the entire building was swaying quite visibly. The idea that it was an earthquake in Bangkok still seemed far-fetched. As I rushed out, I wondered if this was a localized event at the mall. Maybe there was some explosion, and the building was collapsing? I watched as I filed out, hoping nothing came crashing down.

I rushed out into the sunlight with hundreds of others and joined the many hundreds gathered there. There was a lot of shocked silence and some screaming. Someone was pointing up, and I saw something fall off the top of a condominium - perhaps shards of glass.

So, it was a quake. Earthquakes like this in Bangkok were unheard of. Was this city even built for a shock like this?

Still in a daze, I shoved my stuff into my bag, and the realization hit me. N was working from home today, on the 17th floor. A wave of panic rolled through me as I pulled up my phone to call her.

At this point, I had no idea if this was just the beginning. Would there be more quakes? As I pulled out my phone, N called me, scared and breathless. “Everything shook. What should I do?”

I asked her to take the stairwell and come down. She remained on the call as she walked down from the 17th.

Central Bangkok was a surreal sight. Thousands had walked out of multiple highrises — offices, hotels, malls, condos— and they all stood outside, on the sidewalks, spilling onto the roads.

I eventually made my way to the area near our condo where everyone was gathered. A couple of other friends from the condo were there, too. N’s experience had been even more visceral.

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Up on the 17th floor, N had felt a lot more swaying. The heavy sliding door of our balcony began banging back and forth. She sat on the floor to get control and saw (through large glass windows) things peeling away from neighboring buildings. In real time, she saw a crack spread in the wall of our house (“like a scene from Final Destination” — her words).

On top of all this, someone outside on the 17th floor had started screaming for help (out of sheer panic). Then, when the shaking stopped, she called me, and walked down the 17 floors.

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We all stood around for a few hours there outside. No one wanted to go into the condos again with the talk of aftershocks. We chatted and whiled away time.

Groups of local businesses had already set up little stalls to give everyone water. Some bought mangoes from a fruit vendor. Someone got guava. Many friends and relatives were now calling to check in. We joked and laughed nervously. We exchanged stories of experiencing the quake. “I thought my medication was finally hitting me,” said a friend.

Eventually, our collective adrenaline dropped, and by four in the evening, our condo had resumed elevators and informed people that it was safe to return. We went out and had a couple of beers, trying to wind down on one of the most surreal days for most of us.

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Cracked condo

There are numerous videos of condos around Bangkok swaying in the quake, ranging from the spectacularly scary water pouring off its rooftop pools to high-floor videos of people who seem irrationally calm. In one luxury condo, the connecting bridge broke as the two towers swayed. The worst disaster was the collapse of an underconstruction building that trapped nearly 100 workers (17 dead, 77 still trapped or dead).

Do you see the building to the left of the one spraying water in the last video? That’s our condo!

We’ve been assured that our condo is structurally safe. Visually, the building seems largely unscathed, especially compared to other condos or buildings with visible outer damage.

Inside, though, our home on the 17th floor had taken a beating. There are cracks on most walls: large, x-shaped, cracked, vertical ones, some deep fissures and many hairline tendrils snaking all around. It’s a permanent symbol of the shaking, compressing and moving our house did in that minute and a half.

Crackkk!

These are cosmetic walls, so structurally, we’re fine (I hope!). “We should try and sell tickets to see the earthquake house,” N joked later, trying to counter the maudlin visual. Unfortunately, earthquake hit home isn’t in short supply across the city.

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City of cracked buildings

Across Bangkok, hundreds of such condos with dozens of houses would need inspection and work now. Engineers and contractors will be in high demand. Some condos aren’t sure if they are structurally safe to reside in. A few may get abandoned.

We don’t know when ours will be worked on, but the cracked walls make me uncomfortable. However, even if we move condos, where would we start looking? The quake hit every part of the city, and there wasn’t a single tall building that didn’t sway.

The largest quake in Bangkok

Everyone was shocked by the intensity of the hit. Bangkok had never experienced this level of shaking before. Over the years, it has become a thriving metropolis with hundreds of high rises and penthouse views looking far into the horizon. Suddenly, they all shook, and things seemed uncertain.

While Thailand is in a seismic-free zone, it is surrounded by seismically active hotspots. Even if the events are far away. Bangkok’s presence on a deep and soft alluvial soil amplifies ground motion from faraway events.

There is a nice explanation of how this kind of bed makes it susceptible to lower frequency waves that travel a long distance and what specific types of buildings it affects here:

A well-known example of this amplification phenomenon was observed in the M8.1 Michoacán event in 1985, when an earthquake on the west coast of Mexico caused extensive damage and more than 5,000 casualties in Mexico City, 350 km from the epicenter. Although the magnitude was large, the quake's epicenter was sufficiently distant from concentrations of exposure inland that seismologists and engineers would not have expected it to cause significant damage. But Mexico City lies on silt and volcanic clay sediments, which resonate with long-period seismic waves and can quite dramatically increase their amplitude.

The lower frequency waves, which travel long distances, get amplified, but they also affect taller buildings, which Bangkok is full of.

In this case, the fear about what could have been was intense. Just a little more powerful, and dozens of buildings may have collapsed. Fatalities could have been in the thousands, maybe more.

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A night of anxiety

We slept in the same condo that night. Many of our friends had decided to stay out in hotels or travel to other places the same night. We were partly assured by the fact that our house-owners (M & N) lived in the same condo. Also, there was a lack of any obvious visual damage outside. M had worked in construction and was even involved when this building was built 15 years back. He said he was going to sleep just fine.

I barely slept that night. I’d always been someone willing to give up control and be in the arms of the universe. Not entirely, it turns out.

I kept tossing and turning, waiting to sense if a new rumble or something was shifting. Was our condo safe to live in? What if it shook again and we had to run out?

I sensed movement where there was none. The Japanese call it jishin-yoi (I later learned). It roughly translates to earthquake drunk or earthquake sickness. It is a psychlogical phenomenon where people experience phantom shakes or tremors.

Every time I fell asleep, my body would wake me with a myoclonic jerk, as if I was supposed to keep watch. Thankfully, after that night, my high-alert internal systems switched off.

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The sadness of entropy

A sadness has emerged for me in the aftermath, and I am still trying to pinpoint what it is. It may be just a reaction to the drop in all the high-intensity chemicals of the shock and fear. There is a certain mild gloominess and a surfacing of the idea that good times have ended (are ending).

This house we’ve lived in for over 5 years is officially the longest N and I’ve stayed anywhere in our 15 years of marriage. This has also been among the most blissful phases of our lives. We’d fallen in love with Thailand, had great experiences, and lived in a window of time largely devoid of drama and massive stressors in our personal lives.

I always knew this would be an aberration. N and I had often talked about how this can’t just keep lasting - this kind of tranquil existence. The idea that one day we might not be in Thailand or just this home and think back with nostalgia used to make me proactively sad.

I’d written a short piece triggered by these moods last year:

Dès vu

This rumble seemed to indicate the ending of such times.

This rental home, which we’ve loved so much, now has cracks and bruises all over the walls, thanks to the quake. It’s nothing that cannot be repaired, but seeing these cracks run across the length of these walls makes me sad. It's almost like a living thing - a part of our lives that has taken the brunt of this quake. Also, it seems to visually accentuate the feeling that the shell is cracking.

It’s all likely in my head. A week hence, it’ll probably seem overly sentimental.

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Gratefulness

There are two key thoughts I wanted to end with:

1. The real victims are in Myanmar. As always, the privileged (me) gets to talk about it as an experience, but to those people there, this was their lives completely decimated in an instant. Thousands died, lost limbs, and lost their loved ones, properties and more. It’s heartbreaking to see. That country cannot seem to catch a break.

2. I was moved by the number of people who messaged to check in and learn about the news. This made me grateful that so many thought of me (and us) and ashamed that I do not do enough of this reaching out myself. As a start, I have made an Excel sheet of everyone who reached out or checked in and plan to connect with them for conversations over the course of the rest of this year. It’s the least I can do to build the muscle and also show a reciprocation of thought.

Also, the title of this newsletter has never been more relevant than it is now. It always helps me ground myself and maybe have a little chuckle at the end of it all.

Could be Worse,

Tyag