Fremont native survives China earthquake

A former Fremont woman now living in Chengdu, China, had to deal with something this week that she never thought she’d have to while growing up in Nebraska.

Kim Dallas, a graduate of Cedar Bluffs High School and the University of Nebraska at Kearney, lives only about 60 miles south of the epicenter of a strong earthquake in China. She has lived there for about 2 1/2 years.

A Monday 7.9 magnitude earthquake rocked Wenchuan County of southwest China’s Sichuan Province. Officials have said the death toll could reach 50,000.

Chengdu also is in the Sichuan Province.

"There was quite a big aftershock today," Dallas said Friday by phone from her home. "We ran out of the house. Our home just keeps moving."

When the initial quake happened, her husband, Jonny, was at work, her 6-year-old daughter Gemma was at school and her 3-year-old son Angus was asleep. Kim was on the third floor with her son and a helper who was cleaning in the four-story concrete townhouse the Dallas family lives in and was getting ready to head to Gemma’s school to play basketball with the high school girls when the quake began.

"I noticed the wall was shaking," she said. "Then the book shelf started going."

Kim, who was born in Fremont, said she initially thought her helper was really going to town cleaning or that construction next door had caused the house to shake.

Then she realized it was an earthquake.

"I scooped my son up and went into my daughter’s room and laid next to the bed," she said.

She said she had read in a book that was the best thing to do in an earthquake in China.

"The house was swaying back and forth and we could hear things crashing from the other floors," Kim said, adding she thought the roof was collapsing. "It just kept getting worse and worse. The house just went back and forth. It was scary."

She said the initial earthquake lasted almost three minutes.

"We had some damage," Kim said. "A light broke, a TV fell down. None of the pictures fell off the wall and I was shocked about that."

The phone lines were down, so she couldn’t initially find out if her daughter and husband were OK.

"I couldn’t get through to my husband," Kim said. "I heard from him an hour and a half after (the earthquake)."

At about that same time, Gemma returned home from school and Jonny returned home at about 8 p.m., she said. Nobody in the family was injured.

The management office of the gated compound the family lives in initially warned people not to go back into their homes.

"The first day, a bunch of our friends came to our compound," Kim said. "We slept outside in tents."

She said most ex-patriot communities are in compounds that would be similar to upscale gated communities with guards here.

While sleeping in tents, she said there were several aftershocks but nothing like the initial earthquake.

On Tuesday, it started raining and continued throughout the day and night, causing the family to move back into their home.

"The four of us are sleeping on one mattress in the doorway," Kim said.

She said the family has decided to stay in Chengdu unless there is an issue with the water or food supply.

"There are all these rumors going around that are driving everyone crazy. It scares everyone," Kim said. "There was a scare with the water. They thought the water supply had been compromised."

It hadn’t, and she said things are relatively calm there now.

She said Jonny is busy as construction manager for Intel to get a new site up and running and her daughter has returned to school.

"With all those children in the schools (who were killed), it’s extremely sad," Kim said.