The day my entire world shook

It was 8:05pm on January 6 2020. I was sitting in our sofa, watching TV while my husband was trying to cook some eggnog for the very first time. We lived in Ponce, one of the biggest cities in the south of Puerto Rico, a small island in the Caribbean. We were living there because I started my doctoral studies in clinical psychology, in that city. I look at our Christmas tree moving slowly, swaying from side to side, in a passive way. "It is shaking..." I tell my husband. It wasn't the first time, but this time, something was different. "Don't worry sweetie, everything will be okay" he replied. I got a bit anxious and decided to text my mom, and tell her about it. I told her I did not want to stay in the house, and that I wanted to go stay with her. It was kind of late in the night to drive for half an hour, so I stayed.

We went to sleep that night, with our fur baby (dog) called Psiquis (psyche). I had to sleep early because I was about to start my second semester the next morning. But at 4:24 am, an aggressive movement woke me up, instead of my phone alarm. I felt like my head was spinning, and my bed was cracking into pieces. It was like being on a mechanic bull, like those you see in parties and activities. The walls were literally moving, and I could see how my room was changing it's shape, from a square to a parallelogram and then back to a square. Suddenly there was no power, and while the earth was moving aggressively, we could hear the wind blowing in a mysterious way. Mother nature was definitely waking up early that day. I thought it was a dream, or a nightmare, but no. We were experiencing a 6.4 earthquake with an epicenter in the south of the island.

We start grabbing our clothes and looking for our emergency backpacks. I needed to urinate but I was in shock, I was walking slowly and it was my husband who tried to make me realize what was happening. While he was trying to put a leash on Psiquis, I went to the bathroom, and I could see all my stuff on the floor. We started listening to people screaming on the streets, hundreds of people running and screaming. some of them were running, others were trying to drive their cars, but the earth was not steady, and we only had one exit in our neighborhood. We tried to grab what we could, and then got into our car. There was so many people outside, everyone literally running for their lives. For our surprise, we lived in the border of a Tsunami zone, and we did not know that, since the ocean seemed pretty far from us, and there were no signs, announcing the zone as a Tsunami danger zone. We did not know where to go, we were new in Ponce. Our crazy brains were literally freaking out, so we decided to drive to my parent's house. That meant driving by the shore for 10 minutes, we did not think, "there is a Tsunami warning right now, we need to drive as far away from the beach as possible", no! As we start driving, thinking that we were going to feel safer, we see in the middle of the road, a giant rock (piece of mountain really) blocking the way. We had to make a U turn, and start driving somewhere else, but we were still close to the ocean, I could see it from our car. It was a moment of despair, loneliness, sadness, uncertainty and many other things. Our entire world shook.

We started driving back and saw a car coming our way (towards the giant rock), we tell them "make a U turn, a mountain is collapsing and blocking the road" so we all decided to go back. We kept driving and parked in a detention center, that was in the top of a mountain, there was a lot of people, but we were all wondering, if the Tsunami starts, are we safe up here? is this high enough? if the Tsunami start, will we be able to drive down? So many questions, but no answers. We stayed in that place for hours. After an earthquake, aftershocks start happening, they can last for months, and in this case, they could be as strong as at least 6.3, as soon as they start being higher than the original earthquake, they are not aftershocks, they are new earthquakes. We were feeling all of them while seeing the poles dance side by side.

After a few minutes we got notice that there was no Tsunami danger, and we were able to drive down from where we were. We went directly to hour house, scared, sad, crying, and upset. When we opened the door, we saw our wedding centerpieces shattered, and everything was either broken or damaged. The house got severe cracks, and in that moment we realized, we were no longer safe under that room. Little did we know, that the night before the earthquake was going to be our last night in our house. We decided to take some of our clothes, while we cried rivers over our belongings. We then drove to my parents house who was safer and far away from the ocean. And that’s where the real nightmare begun...

To be continued

DLSV