Tremors on A Thursday

This afternoon, at around 1:30 PM, Philippine Time, two consecutive earthquakes shook Makati City and other parts of the National Capital Region. As of this posting, the epicenter of the quake is still unknown. Ate Sarj told me that the stronger quake is 5.9 magnitude in the Richter scale.

Around 12:30 PM, I just left a local high school to visit and congratulate one of my very good friends on his graduation this coming Tuesday. I was actually lost and was helplessly asking for directions on how to get to my school. You see, my first class is at 12:45 and it's a major one and I was desperate to get to school. I tried hailing cabs but after a dozen passed by and they all have passengers, I decided to take the jeepneys.

At around 1:20 PM, I finally arrived at Magallanes and rode another jeep to our school. By 1:25 PM, I'm already inside the college premises. I finished encoding my Law Communication 1 homework early this morning, around 2 Am for that matter, but am unable to have it printed. I went to the school's IT Resources Group to have it printed after paying at the Accounting Department. After I opened the file (my homework), I noticed that the text on the computer screen were moving. Atty. Cuevas required us to be creative when it comes to homework, but I clearly remember that I did not put animations on my word processed HW. It will also be useless if printed.

That's when I realized that the ground is shaking. It felt normal at first but the tremors grew stronger. One of the ITRG staff also noticed that an earthquake is ongoing and alerted everyone. The Director of ITRG panicked and told his staff to save all data, and get out of the building.

I went to class after that and was marked absent. It's already 1:37 and LAWCOM1 is from 12:45-2:15 only. My blockmates would've sang 'Happy Birthday To You' to one of our blockmates but Atty. Cuevas told us to get out of the building at that moment.

I still managed to drop a letter to one of my professor's pigeon-hole box. My excuse letter for the Youth Camp. Our Program Director told me to get down now and I did.

There were two quakes. the second was the aftershock. It's considerably weaker in intensity than the previous one. All students, faculty and staff gathered at teh parking lot to wait. It took almost ten minutes for all students, faculty and staff to vacate the building. It's no longer a drill, it's for real! Thanks to Ate Janelle for the idea. We've been conducting earthquake drills in the past months but I don't know why it took ten minutes for all the people to vacate the college.

Also, the fire alarms were not pulled on all floors. i think the only alarm i heard was from the second floor. After that, the building administration department and staff checked the building for damages and the building was later declared safe. I was hoping for the suspension of classes but I was disappointed. Classes resumed minutes later. We had World Literature then and discussed Luisa Valenzuela's Vision from the Corner of One Eye and Edgar Allan Poe's Tell Tale heart.

Praise God that no one was hurt and we're still alive. Glory to God and Hallelujah!