Jakarta Car Bombing
In 2004, a 1 ton car bomb exploded in front of the Australian embassy in Jakarta at 10:30 A.M.[3] I was working at a language school on the other side of the road, and every morning I did a u-turn at the embassy at that exact time. The previous night, I had been very tired and was too lazy to fill up on gas, which meant I was 10 minutes late. When the bomb detonated, I was about half a kilometer away - my car rocked, debris rained down on my windscreen, and I thought it was an earthquake.
2004 London Underground Bombing
My English professor was in London at the time with his young son. While getting ready to get on the tube, waiting at the platform, the son, who might've been 7-10 at the time, desperately wanted to leave. Go above ground, and "see the sunshine."
Kids will be kids, right? Well my prof, being a good dad, gave his son what he wanted. As they were walking up the steps, the train departed. They were at King's Cross Station.
1995 St. Michel Station bombing-Paris
I 'missed' the St Michel Station bombing in Paris in 95 quite similarly. Was about to get in the station when I realized I forgot to buy one of the books on my list. It was school break and there's a huge second hand bookstore right next to the station. After I was done in the shop, there was some commotion outside, emergency services arriving there. It took quite some time to figure out what happened.
F-5 Tornado
I lived through an F-5 tornado. Everyone of my close neighbors died. My house was completely destroyed, not a wall standing. I was in a small hallway and it literally picked it straight up. I got pelted with glass dirt etc had to get over 120 stitches from my head to torso. I can't explain how I survived.
2007 Solomon Islands Earthquake
In 2007 while in the Solomon Islands I went through an earthquake that had a magnitude of 8.1 on a near by island and had after shocks up to a magnitude of 6.1. Surprisingly, despite spending most of my life in an area prone to these things, this was the first one I had experienced in my fucking life.
I nearly shat myself when the earth started shaking. I was in a hut with some of my friends having some tea and biscuits and then everything just started shaking. I remember it clearly at the time because I had diarrhea at the time but I just had to hold it in. On top of that I was away from home because I forgot now but I was visiting a neighboring island called Simbo. So as soon as I felt the earthquake, I was simply like fuck that, I'm going into the mountains to avoid a fucking tsunami. It was a massive trek and trust me I did not stop to have a break but I did it for the sake of my life. When you're in danger, the adrenaline is insane. I've been told ever since I was young that if the earth moves, you run up to the mountains.
Some people decided to stay in their houses near the sea shore because they thought that everything would be fine, but seriously, nothing is ever fine in these moments. Most of us got up there but those who stayed behind got severely injured or killed.
Complete villages were destroyed that were on the side of the sea. The thing is, people always forget what happens. Sure with technology improving we can be warned before it happens, but your whole house been destroyed is still not worth it for a nice view.
Heaps of houses were destroyed and god it was awful. The clean up is a the worst part though.
2011 Earthquake/Tsunami
I lived through the big Japan earthquake/tsunami a few years ago. I was in the mountains, so the tsunamis weren't a threat and the earthquake didn't do much damage in my area (stuff got thrown around in my apartment and there were cracks on the walls).
The worst part in terms of affecting my daily life was the radiation scare. It rained shortly afterwards and I remember having to dig up the soil around my office with my other co-workers to remove the contaminated dirt.
2007 Virginia Tech shooting
On April 16th, 2007 during my Freshman year of College at Virginia Tech, one of worst school shootings in history occurred.
I was in McBride, a math building right next to Norris hall (I could jump to the Norris Hall doors from McBride). I still had no idea what was happening when my class ended around 10AM, yet our teacher told us to just go back to our dorms and not go anywhere because a shooting happened earlier in the day on campus at West AJ, one of the residence halls. On our way out of the class, we were met by a Cop with an M4, or a shotgun, yelling at us to stay inside and not come out. The sheer terror in his eyes still haunts me.
For the next 6 hours, I watched as students jumped from windows and were hauled out of the building: some moving, some not. Police SUVs were doubling as ambulances for a while, and soon just a row of Ambulances had pulled up waiting to take the dead/injured away.
I stayed on campus after this happened. I didn't attend classes as we did not have to, and used the next month of time as a way to get closer with the people who were on campus, and help my friends heal. Lots of therapy got me through that one. It's still hard for me to not enter a classroom and immediately look at the windows to see if I can jump out, the door to see if it locks, or if there are alternative exits that you can use.
The worst part about this was the political movement that came afterwards. Reporters stopping me for any kind of statement and then twisting it as much as possible to fit their agenda. Religious zealots handing out pamphlets and yelling in megaphones saying we deserved the terror that occurred to us, and that it was our fault. Every year on the anniversary, they would come back to campus.
In the end, I now am a Ph.D student. I've used this experience to motivate me to achieve the most I can, and to help others unlock their potential.
2004 Sri Lanka Tsunami
Basically, we'd gone to Thailand and Sri Lanka for the Christmas Holiday. My brothers and I spent a good few weeks bumming around Bangkok and the Koh Islands and then met up with our family for the Sri Lankan leg.
We stayed at my Aunts place in Tangalla, which is at the very bottom right of the island for reference, before deciding we wanted to head up to Adams Peak the next morning to see the "sacred footprint" (Buddhas footprint). So we arranged a car that evening and all went to bed.
I can't remember exactly what time it was but my brothers and I all woke up between 2 - 3 am due to hearing the windows rattle. If you've ever grown up in a place that gets earth quakes, like California, you're use to this. But in Sri Lanka this felt really out of place- as though an 18 wheeler and barreled on by (which obviously they don't have there). We shrugged it off, went back to sleep and then got up about 630 in the morning to get ready for our trip.
Before leaving Tangalle, my younger brothers friend wanted to email his parents so he went down to the internet cafe. He'd been gone for a while so I went to check on him. Apparently he'd been sitting there for quite a while just trying to connect to the internet but failing hard at it, so I persuaded him to just give up and get in the car.
We start driving down the coast to hit the main road that would take us up to Adams Peak when our driver gets dead silent and cranks up the radio and starts to go faster. We're all wonder what the shit is going on when he just says "Wave.. wave wave," and then floors it up the connecting road to get inland. What we didn't know was that the wave was about 200 yards or so behind us, taking out pretty much everything.
We finally made it up to Kandy, booked a hotel with dozens of other people, and stared at the news reports of dead floating bodies, trains strewn everywhere, and everything we had just driven past gone.
Two of the major reasons a lot of people had died in Sri Lanka is because 1) It was Poya Day, the day of Buddhist pilgrimage, so the trains were overcrowded with people going down the coast to catch another train going inland to visit the sacred temples. 2) A lot of the older fisherman knew to run when the waters receded, but the younger ones didn't. They looked at it as a sign from the heavens and ran out into where the ocean WAS to grab all the dying and flapping fish.
Anyway, to this day I have pretty bad anxiety. I hate being in crowded places, or around loud people / music / things, or even simply sitting anywhere but in the aisle seat of an airplane or at a restaurant.
So life goes.
1997 Waterworld California Slide Collapse
In my school we had a senior skip day. It was tradition. Every year we’d go down to the local water park and we’d see if we could beat the previous year’s high score. We’d go down one of the covered water slides, and one person would plug it up, and we’d see how many of our other high school class could fill up the slide.
The lifeguard on duty was a graduate who knew the routine. The previous year had managed a commendable fifty-six kids, it was hard to be sure, it was difficult to keep count before the weight was too much on the kids in front, and our combined mass forced everyone through.
We were going to blow that record away. That’s what I was told. We were going to reach seventy. It was a beautiful sunny day and we were all prepared, all excited. We let the guys on the football team line up first, their strength and weight would be capable of holding up the line. Then we went through, one by one, sliding down into the small space.
I was near the middle. It was a fun slide, until I slammed up against a body in front of me. It was painful for me, my heels digging into his back, and I could only imagine what it was like to him, until the next forced their way into me.
My legs went under his arms, my feet against a person two in front of him, and I braced myself with my arms against the slide, the water rushing between us.
I sat there, crammed between two people, my arms tired trying avoid becoming pressed up against the person in front of me. I remember his skin, slick and tan, and the cool water pouring passed us both, both of our mouths locked in a smile, enjoying our little prank.
I must have been there for a few minutes, but it felt like an eternity. The atmosphere became hot with the heat of bodies all shoved into that tiny, confined space, forcing the water up to our chins.
The laughter turned to panic. I could hear a girl scream first, and then a crack, like thunder, from behind us. Screams turned to cries to move, to let go. Then we could all feel it. Our weight was too much, and the slide began to slump.
One of the pillars holding the slide had broken away, and the slide shifted violently near the middle. I began to yell with the rest of them, pleading the people in front to let us out. My body was forced into a cramped fetal position, nearly drowning in the rushing water, my cheek against someone’s back, as people forced and fought their way through. I could hear people cry out, begging us to let go, but we were trapped just like them.
Then, hardly able to breath, caused either by the weight forced on me, or the water rising up to my eyes, I could feel it. A section has collapsed; the one directly behind me. It disconnected and teetered away from us. It leaned down and fell forward, belching out children to the concrete walkway three stories below us. It forced ours backwards, and we teetered back, and then forward. My hands braced firmly on the sides, I could feel the person behind me grab my waist, keeping him from falling.
Screams and cries for help rang out from the disconnected slide behind us. The pitches of the screams kept changing, different pitches from the boys and from the girls as each fell through, no one to hold them back, the water forcing them through the open tunnel pouring them towards the hard concrete below.
In an instant the panic subsided, and the people began to move. The person in front of me dislodged and started to slide forward, and my legs were freed. Our section had slumped down where it joined the section in front of us. It overcompensated and a sharp lip was formed where it didn't quite line up. I slid over it with my bare back, taking with it a long swath of skin.
I laid in the pool where the slide deposited us; blood filling it up from the sharp edge that took a piece of my back. There were dozens of us, crying, screaming, or in shock.
Three kids died that day. The first two to fall suffered a broken neck and a fractured skull, the third was crushed to death by the others, dying of a collapsed chest. Another seventeen were sent to the hospital.
I have a white scar that crosses my back like a lightning bolt that always reminds me of that day. And I still have trouble in confined spaces, and sometimes when I’m in the shower—when the water runs past my face—my blood freezes, and I can’t breath.
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