Can there be anything more frightening than an earthquake? I guess maybe a tsunami would qualify but thankfully I've never experienced a tsunami. In Spain in 1965, I did however, live through an earthquake. I can't wait to tell you about it!
It was Sunday night in Sevilla and we were always exhausted on Sunday nights. Ted had preached twice by then and spent the afternoon studying and writing. Usually we'd have people over after church in the evening, so the house was always full until midnight, then we had to clean up after them. It was always late when we finally collapsed into our beds.
My dad was living with us. He'd been there since Mother's death the year before. The kids were in their bedrooms asleep and Daddy asleep in the spare room. Ted and I had gone to bed last, so we'd only been asleep a couple of hours, when I awoke and felt the bed shaking...not violently, it was more like a tremor. I touched Ted's back and asked quietly, "Why is the bed shaking?"
He didn't move but I heard him sigh. "It's just the dog scratching underneath our bed." he mumbled.
"Ted, our dog is not big enough to move the bed." I argued. Our dog was a miniature greyhound who stood about a foot high and weighed 12 pounds.
Suddenly the shaking became violent. The bed was now skating across the floor. Ted sat straight up, fully awake now, and exclaimed, "The Lord is coming!" He jumped out of bed and pulled his pants on. (I've always thought this was funny. He didn't want to meet the Lord with his pants off!) By then I was sitting up too, looking out the balcony doors of our bedroom. By the light of the street lamp I could see the housing unit across the street. It was swaying back and forth.
"Ted, it's an earthquake!" I yelled. (Note how certain and declarative we both were when the truth was, neither of us had a clue.)
Fully awake now, he took charge and I was glad. "You go get your dad and I'll get the kids. We have to move everyone downstairs!"
I ran into Daddy's room and started yelling for him to get up. He didn't budge...he just kept snoring. I shook him and yelled a couple more times. Finally he said, "Huh, what's wrong?"
He sat up on the side of his bed and reached for his pants. "Forget you pants! we have to get downstairs!" I yelled at him again.
"You go on. I'll be right behind you!"
"No, I'm not leaving you to walk down those swaying stairs alone. Come on now!" I demanded. So he stood up and grabbed his pants. I took his arm and we started downstairs. About midway down, I realized that it had stopped shaking, so we proceeded at a slower, steadier pace.
When we reached the downstairs, Ted and the kids were sitting at the dinning room table.
I looked behind them at the plaster wall and saw a long crack, about an inch wide, that went diagonally from the ceiling to the floor. I pointed to it and said, "Maybe we'd better go outside, I don't know if the house is safe any more."
We led Daddy and the kids out into the yard. There we met up with neighbors who were also afraid of their "cracked" houses. After standing around talking about it for an hour or so, we realized that the danger had passed and our houses were still standing. Daddy had already gone back to his bed and Ted and I were holding two sleeping children, so we took them back to their beds and returned to ours.
It took me a couple hours to get to sleep. Every sound startled me and every time Ted moved, I grabbed him and gasped.
The next day we talked it to death. Everyone wanted to know what was the first thing we did when the earthquake hit. We told them our stories and they told us theirs. I remember that I was particularly impressed with our Chaplain's story. He lived in a high rise apartment in downtown Seville and he said that when he realized it was an earthquake, he fell out of bed and onto his knees, praying that the Lord would spare the city.
The Lord did spare the city. It was quite a large quake...about a 6.4, if I remember right, but for four days before the quake, it had rained and the rain soaked ground made it a sponge. Because of that, the high risers were cushioned when they shook. We were blessed.
And the cracks in our walls? Well, the Air Force in their tender mercy, sent around Spanish workers who put a layer of plaster over all the cracks then painted over them, so we couldn't see them any more and therefore stopped worrying about them. I guess the USAF wasn't really concerned that the houses would collapse.
All in all it was an exciting event, but honestly, I don't think I've ever been as scared or felt as helpless in my life. In an earthquake, there's simply no place to run!
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