I'm in mood of posting another stuff, although I'm not so sure what that is. Okay, I've been wanting to post this. It's quite unnecessary but it keeps popping in my head telling me to post this, since it's like something rare ever happened to me. It's just I haven't got the time to post it.
But you can skip this post, and I'm planning to create a more exciting post (involving boys!).
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Alright, so what I'm about to talk here is something about the earthquake. Well, Jakarta may be quite far from the subterranean plates near the southern coast of Java. But we never expected that we would feel such a major effect caused by 7.3 Richter Scale earthquake located in the southern coast of Java. In fact, I'm sure everyone must have never experienced such a strong shake like this before.
It was Wednesday, September 2nd, and I just went home from school after dropping my aunt and cousin at PIM. Shortly after, I arrived at home at approximately 2.50 pm and directly went upstairs to slump myself at the comfy couch, and turned on the TV and stumbled upon my favorite TV show, which is SpongeBob SquarePants. I was extremely exhausted that I could barely sleep at the car, and it wasn't until I felt like there was a soft, gentle shake. At first I thought my heart must be pounding so hard, thus creating an effect to my whole body as if my nerves were also shaking.
But then, the gentle shake was getting harder and harder and even more violent. I started to feel that it was real and my heartbeat wasn't playing any tricks on this. The first thing that popped in my mind was, of course, earthquake itself. Then I looked up at the hanging lamp and much to my horror, it was already hanging so violent and spinning all around. Something flashed in my mind all at once that if that lamp could sometimes fall off, and I was nearly underneath it.
I was positive it was earthquake, and then I stood to my feet to make sure how violent it was shaking, and that was when I felt the floor underneath me was shaking violently. I quickly called my maids, who at that time, one of them was storing my clothes to my closet.
"Mbak, is it just me or there's an earthquake?" I asked her. The other one came up. Silly me. I was actually already positive that it was earthquake, but stupidly I still felt the need to confirm someone else if there really was an earthquake.
My maids absentmindedly went 'huh?'. I mean, I have no time to respond to their 'huhs?' and waited until they felt it, while it was shaking really hard. So I just snapped. "Get out of this house!" instantly. Well, you know that whenever there's an earthquake, the first thing we have to do is getting out of the building, right? So the first thing popped in my head is just getting out of this house instantly, before (I was thinking) everything in this house began to fall off or collapse.
At that critical moment, my heart was flipflopping and I was thinking "We're so doomed!" (yeah I'm pretty narrow minded, gotta say that XD). Even I was thinking to bring with me some precious things just in case...you know. But well, as the things were still shaking so hard, I climbed down the stairs with an adrenaline rush, afraid if I would lose my balance. You know, it felt as if you were on the moving staircase in Harry Potter, the staircase wasn't moving, instead it was shaking back and forth, something like that.
I quickly rushed barefooted and still in my tartan uniform to the garage. I thought when we reached the ground floor, we would feel less of the jolt, but in fact, it was still as hard as we all felt on the second floor. I had a feeling this earthquake was BAD. As in really bad. Because usually if there's an earthquake hitting Jakarta, the citizens would even hardly feel it, not until there's an announcement about it and they will go
Oh really? An earthquake hitting the capital? I hardly felt it."
But this time it was different. Since people could feel the violent jolt even if they were on the streets, inside their car, it was just bad. I noticed all neighbors in the neighborhood were on the streets as well. I even spotted the tall palm trees across my house were jolting in an unusual motion. Well, if the trees were being blown by the wind, you could see only the branches were moving, but this time, even the thin logs themselves were moving. You could tell the difference. The birdcage, the bells hung above the door, were all shaking whilst there was no wind at all. Well, if you don't know what I mean, try imagining yourself inside a plane which is currently experiencing a turbulence, but in this case, you feel that turbulence at home, on the streets, which is...even scarier than experiencing turbulence up in the sky.
I waited there until a minute passed and everything grew calm, much to my relief. I asked maids. Still paranoid. "Is it over?" They nodded and we all went back inside.
There were three hanging lamps in my house. Two were located downstairs and another one upstairs (near the living room where I was watching SpongeBob earlier). I quickly switched the channel to the news channel, wondering where the epicentre was located. With an earthquake this violent, I was thinking the epicentre would be somewhere close.
Still, I waited for a minute and there wasn't any breaking news appear, not until an announcement from BMG (Badan Meteorologi dan Geofisika) appeared on the screen, with the information that the epicentre was located 145 km South West of the town of Tasikmalaya, located in Indian Ocean (which is pretty far from where Jakarta is), 30 km deep under the sea floor, with 7.3 Richter Scale, which is yes, considered as a major earthquake. Well, I learned Geography before and studied about Earthquake, and the earthquake with the hypocenter 30 km deep is considered a dangerous earthquake and the shallower the hypocenter is, the more violent the jolt will be created.
My thoughts wandered off to my mother, whose office is located on the 28th floor of BRI building in Sudirman, very high up. I called her many times just to make sure she's OK. Meanwhile, my dad's office's building only has two storeys.
I turned on the computer and logged in to Twitter to see people's reaction about the earthquake. All of them were, of course, shocked for they'd never felt an earthquake this violent before. It was so hard that I believe it could wake someone up from sleep. My friend even told me that she was sleeping and she felt as if someone was shaking her bed. See? It implies that the earthquake wasn't like any other we'd felt before.
My friend texted me, while I was still dialing my mother in despair and there was still no answer. Apparently the telephone connection all over the city was busy due to the earthquake. Well, my friend said she was in the 3rd floor of Tendean Plaza, going shopping with her mother and that was when she felt the earthquake. Everybody just rushed out of the building all in instant to survive. I texted my friend.
"And you did go out with the others, didn't you?"
She went like. "No, I just waited inside with my mother, watching people stampeding to get outside in despair, waiting for the earthquake to last."
I went. "What? You just watched people going out while you didn't make any attempts to survive?!"
Ugh, my friend, she thought earthquake would be like an easy peazy thing to handle? I guess she needs to read the tips to survive earthquake.
Alright, back to my mother, finally after almost 20th attempt, my mom picked up, telling me she was going STRAIGHT home. Then, at home, she told me how things were going in her office. I was thinking it must be very scary to be on the 28th floor. "It was terrible!" said my mom, who admitted how painful her legs were shortly after climbing down the emergency stairs. "Everything just went shaking and even some of my friends calling God's name in despair, then they blacked out. I had no time to drag them out of the building so I just went straight to the emergency stairs and climbed down (from the 28th floor) to the lobby, where everyone was gathering outside. The receptionist desperately stayed behind her desk and went like 'Oh my God! What am I going to do now?!' That was silly, because the receptionist was located in the lobby and she could just walk outside easily."
Even more, my aunt's office was said to be in the 52nd floor!!!! But strangely, she was still able to use elevator.
I decided to stick in front of TV for the rest of the day and followed the updates of the earthquake news and felt sad to learn that some people were killed from this violent earthquake. As time went by, more dead victims increased up to 50 people. I guess from this natural disaster, we should start not to destroy the nature, for I believe that even mother nature has a feeling.
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