I was in the middle of my PHP lecture to my WEBDEV3 class this morning at around 1100H when I felt the teacher’s table tapping into my knees, back and forth. Then one of my students exclaimed, “Sir, earthquake!”. Calmly, I replied, “OK! Stay at your seats.” We were at the 11th floor of the SDA building then.I forgot that my PC was connected to the LCD projector when posted the event in TwitterFox, so my students saw me micro-blogging while the building is swaying.
The shaking was done in a minute, I guess. One student asked if we were to go done of the building, my response was (verbatim), “We’re at the 11th floor. There are only 2 floors above us. If ever the building will collapse, we have a fair chance of survival. If we will go down, and the building will collapse, the entire 14 floors will be on top of us.” And everyone laughed. Then came the second tremor, this time a little bit stronger than the previous one. By this time, Twitter posts from the likes of Jim Ayson and Charo Nuguid are popping-out of my TwitterFox confirming the first shaking. Then it’s done in almost a minute or so.
So I continued with my lecture, we’re still at the ECHO statement. Then came the DO (security guard), asking all of us to evacuate the building — an SOP. We used the stairs from the 11th floor all the way down to the ground floor 😉 nice exercise. I can still feel my legs aching up to now.