By Dan Bloom
CHIAYI CITY, Taiwan — I was sleeping peacefully in a nightly dreamscape on the fifth floor of very solidly built apartment building with 20 units on 8 floors when suddenly all hell broke loose!
I was thrown out of bed. The kitchen light was on so I could see the inside tree swaying and the walls moving this way and that, and the sound of the steel beams in the building swaying to and fro like plastic straws in the wind along with the walls, the ceiling, the windows, the floor,
It was a terrible 90 seconds, hell on earth, the 50th quake I have experienced in Japan and Taiwan over the past 25 years but this was the worst!
As you can see from news on BBC and CNN and Google, ten tall buildings collasped and pancaked in a nearby city to where I am, one ten-month old little girl was killed in her building’s collapse, and as I write this, so far only ten people are known dead. but many are unaccounted for inside the collapsed buidling.
This is Mother Nature at her worst. Prepare! Somone in New York City asked me how I am no. I replied ‘shaken, not stirred!” It was worst night of my life. Note: Pop star Madonna was in posh a 5-star hotel in Taipei and was knocked out of bed, too, on the 15th floor of a swaying skyscraper hotel.
Nature attacks the rich and the poor. Man-made global warming impact events in the near future will do same: hit the rich and the poor. There is no escape from Mother Nature’s fury and it is unpredictable. Prepare!
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Bloom, based in Taiwan, is an inveterate web surfer who may be contacted via dan.bloom@sdjewishworld.com . Comments intended for publication in the space below must be accompanied by the letter writer’s first and last name and by his/ her city and state of residence (city and country for those outside the U.S.)