I got the scare of my life!

We attended a seminar this morning in the Washington Building at Marina Bay in Coastal Road. The seminar was in 22nd floor and it started at around 9:30am. It went well, and we were all engrossed in listening to the speaker when suddenly, at around 11:00am, we felt like our seats were moving.

At first, my husband thought he was getting dizzy due to hunger (we still haven’t eaten our breakfast because we had to rush to this seminar). Then I told him, “It’s an earthquake!” And everybody else felt it too. We kept on looking outside the window to check the ocean, since the building was just beside the Manila Bay, and we were scared of a tsunami happening.

We relaxed a bit when it stopped, (but actually, I didn’t because I was thinking, Oh my God, we’re in the 22nd floor of the building!), and then suddenly after 3 minutes, it occurred again! That was when we all decided to go down, via the stairs of course. I was really scared, we kept on counting the floors as we went down, and we really rushed when we felt more tremors when we were in 3rd floor. We really breathed a sigh of relief when finally we were on the ground floor.

All I was thinking at that time were our kids whom we left at home. I immediately called them up to check how they were. They didn’t feel anything but just the same, I instructed them that just in case there’s another tremor, they should all go outside the house.

When we opened the radio in the car, we learned that it was Intensity 5, and the Epicenter was 35 km from Mamburao, Mindoro. According to Philvocs, the Epicenter was way below the land so what we felt was actually just around Intensity 3 or 4. But just the same, since we were in the 22nd floor of the building when it happened, we really felt it and yes, it was really scary! It was like, I couldn’t think of anything else, good thing that my husband was there, and he maintained his composure and he kept on reminding me not to panic.

Thank God, we were all fine.