The Biggest Natural Disaster in My Life

The earthquake and tsunami in Japan is the most bad news in the last few days.  I can totally identify with Japanese!  As an island, lots of earthquakes happen in Taiwan.  I’ve ever experienced a big earthquake, too.  It was on September 21st, 1999.  The earthquake was measured 7.3 on the Richter scale.  We call it “921 Big Earthquake”.  7.3 is not a record in the World, but it happened at the bad timing and wrong place.  It did destroy Taiwan.

921 Big Earthquake struck at 01:47AM.  Everyone stayed at home and was sleeping.  When the earthquake struck, my mother waked up my family.  I didn’t know what to do.  I just tried to run out after my mother.  The earthquake was so big and kept shocking for 102 second.  I couldn’t run fast, and even fell down twice!  I still remember how scared everyone was.  Although my home was not destroyed by earthquake, we were afraid to sleep inside the house.  We have been sleeping in my father’s van for several days after the earthquake.

The place of occurrence of an earthquake can also affect the number of deaths.  921 Big Earthquake struck in the middle of Taiwan.  It caused not only lots of property damage, but also deaths and injuries.  Over 2,000 people died, 29 missing, and injuring another 11,000.  It was a record in Taiwan.  If this quake had struck in the Pacific Ocean and very deep, it wouldn’t had killed so many people.