3:15 Wake-up
Call
It was February,
1976. I should remember the date, but I don't. But I do remember the night as if it were a
week ago instead of 21 years. At 3:15 the earth began to shake. I was thrown to the floor.
I screamed as I tore off my sleeping bag. I struggled to get to the doorway. I yelled at
my roommate to get up, sensing he still slept. The sound was deafening. Glass breaking,
brick and stone crumbling, and screaming. I compare it to the sound of a bowling alley
when pins are crashing. Every lane, all at once. It was hard to stand, even hanging on to
the doorjamb. I found out later that the quake lasted 45 seconds and measured 7.5 on the
Richter scale.
As soon as the shaking
and noise stopped, we got flashlights and candles to make the rounds to search each room.
My roommate was still sleeping! A couple rooms down a wall had collapsed on a bed, burying
the guy under a pile of adobe bricks. These bricks are large, weighing about 20 pounds
each. My heart sank. We formed a line to begin passing the bricks off the bed. We got down
to the last few, when the man underneath pushed them aside and jumped up. He bounced on
his cot saying "gracias a Dios, gracias a Dios". A small miracle.
Fortunately the
pension is a single-story building. An 8-foot wall collapsing is survivable. The rest of
the pension was in pretty good shape. But just next door the lady who sold us juice during
the day was dead that night. In all, the death toll reached near 30,000.
We finished our
rounds. Everyone gathered sleeping bags to set out in the courtyard. With aftershocks
coming frequently, no one was willing to chance it in an enclosed room. If not for
exhaustion, I don't think any of us would have slept.
At first light it was
time to assess the situation. My roommate came to talk to me. "You know, I was really
mad last night. I took some Quaaludes and passed out. I got up about 5 to go to the
bathroom, and I saw everyone sleeping in the courtyard. I thought there was a party and I
wasn't invited. Then I find out this morning there was the biggest earthquake of the
century, and I slept through it." I actually did feel a bit sorry for him.
The truth is, though
it sounds strange, I was glad to be there. It felt so good to be alive. Though I wasn't
bouncing on my bed thanking God, there was a certain bounce in my step. My roommate,
Vince, and I toured the city that day. He had just flown in from New York, and was
completely out of his element. He didn't speak any Spanish, and he hung around me like a
little brother. The devastation was incredible. Buildings that had stood for centuries
were reduced to rubble. Even a newer five-story building was split down its center. It had
shifted so you could see into the top story rooms. Some streets just ended where the earth
opened up. Walls collapsed onto the sidewalks exposing peoples' dining rooms and bedrooms.
I would avert my eyes as if I were looking at someone's nakedness. It was hard for me to
look in the eyes of people who had lost so much. Lost children or wives or husbands. I was
torn between thanking God I lived and grieving for those who didn't.
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