Update on Earthquake

Here is an e-mail from Vera about the earthquake:

It’s time to update, we are finally in Belize City, we had to do a wedding rehearsal & I needed to decorate for the wedding that Basil is doing on Sat. However, we have gotten to BC. So this is our day.

Amazingly enough the village survived this. In talking with villagers, they were certainly all frightened but all homes are standing, which amazes me considering what shape some of the houses are in, some of them already look like if you breathe on them they will fall over, but they didn’t last night. One of the villagers Jill, shared when they woke to this event and then it stopped, she realized that what happens after a earthquake of that magnitude and being surrounded by water, that a tsunami would be the next course for the night. So she put life jackets on her daughter Ajani and herself, her husband Emmett thought she was being silly until Hank came with the radio giving the Tsunami watch, he then perked up and started thinking what their next step would be as well!

I actually think because we are on the coast line that we felt it harder then they did, not to mention the fact that we’re at least 8′ high off the ground w/a cement foundation and house, so I don’t think our house gives as well as a wooden house would. We really thought our roof was going to cave in on us and/or the floor was going to start tilting and we were going down. Obviously that didn’t happen, thank you Lord! We lost quite a few items in our house, nothing critical to us. One amazing little tidbit to laugh about is: We have a mirror next to our front door on the top I had three small wooden plaques sitting on it that have some sweet saying. This morning Basil picks the only one that fell off and it said “Life is fragile, handle with prayer”, we got a good laugh out of that.

I think our nerves were on edge, Basil went back to bed around 3:30, I on the other hand stayed up wanting to be on top of what the Tsunami report was, wanting to see what we would need to do. Finally around 5 am I read that the Tsunami watch was over as they watch for 2 hours and if there is no significant or strange wave action they remove the watch. I finally went back to bed until 8. We had a few after shocks, one I was thinking about going back outside, but I think we’re over the worse part of it.

Our apt. in Belize City didn’t have any major damage inside, just a few books fell off the bookshelf, which amazed me after reports we had heard about Belize City and the electricity being out all the way to Mexico and that there were some houses that had collapsed, however nothing different in looks on the outside. Our foundation of the apt. on the other hand doesn’t look really good, there’s a major crack that runs along the base of it about 1″ from the ground. Hmm we’ll see if anything develops out of that.

So other than Basil and I being really tired, we’ve survived this one. It was definitely at least a 3 to 4 min. earthquake, after talking w/Mandy one of our staff persons and all she went thru thinking first that the wind was really strong and when she finally went to her door to see what was happening, but didn’t notice any wind, so she went back to bed, but her house kept rocking, so she thought there was a robber under her house shaking the house to see if she was in it. She got out of bed to find her flashlight, then very sneakily she turned it on and tiptoed to the door to lock it, so the robbers wouldn’t come in, hoping that they didn’t hear her. Then she went back to bed, closed her eyes and thought this was it, they were going to come in. Then she saw my flashlight and thought perhaps there was some lightening outside, then heard my voice, and was so relieved and realized it must have been an earthquake. What a quake to go thru for her first one!

I (Vera) will be going to see the Dr. tomorrow as I may have pneumonia he said, so I’m going to check it out. We want to thank all of you for your encouraging words and prayers. We have survived this and will continue to move forward in the Lord’s work, since He has spared us from this catastrophe, there were some casualities in Honduras, we haven’t heard about any here in Belize.

Thank you so much for your prayers!