Opinion | Sichuan quake: Another aftershock came ... Houses shook violently
SCMP reporter Zhuang Pinghui on the day the Sichuan earthquake struck
When photographer Simon Song and I arrived in Chengdu on Friday night for a five-day trip to revisit the worst-hit areas of the May 12 earthquake of 2008, the last thing we expected was to be there for the live reporting of a new one.
Saturday, April 20
I had just got down to the hotel restaurant for breakfast when the jolt came. It lasted for several seconds and people started to run out of the hotel and into the street.
"There has been no quake for several years and I almost forgot how scary this is," said a woman who raced out of the hotel, panting.
Almost immediately the telephone networks went down: no phone calls could be made out or get through, but slow internet access was still available. Minutes later a Sina microblog reported that the epicentre was in Yaan with a magnitude of 7.0. I ran upstairs to get my luggage.
As I emerged I could see people running down fire escapes, many in their slippers and night clothes. Two middle-aged women passed me with panicked looks and tears streaming down their faces.
A taxi, originally arranged to take us to Dujiangyan, agreed to change route and take us to the epicenter in Yaan's Lushan county. We set off at 8:40am and were lucky enough to get on the Chengwenqiong highway before a traffic control ban was imposed.
We arrived in the centre of Lushan county at 1pm, together with a truck full of soldiers and fire fighting department's command centre truck. The so-called command centre in front of the county government was nothing short of chaotic. Everyone was shouting and no one seemed to know where to go.