I hardly ever get scared, so rarely in fact that sometimes I've wondered if I have some chemical deficiency. But last year, we had an earthquake in Costa Rica, and it was completely unsettling.
We were sitting there on the second story of our cute but shoddy stucco office building when it started to shake. The three of us sitting at our desks immediately turned to look at each other 
and let out collective "whoas" as we waited and waited for it to end. Things shake often, but this one was stronger and more sustained. After about ten seconds, the editor dove under his desk while the weekend editor and I stared at each other with our eyes wide and jaws slightly unhinged, thinking it was going to end any second now. It did after about 15 or 20 seconds.
We went downstairs to see the others. The heavy-set receptionist had had a panic attack in the doorway during the quake and nobody had been able to get out. Local reports were that I was a 6.2, with an epicenter about 30 km northwest of San José. USGS said 6.1.
The reporter finished his brief article, and the editor slipped it into a one-column slot on the front page below a picture of a sunset over the Pacific. The article then jumped to the next page and was accompanied by a picture of a blue government building with a crack in it. We'd just got news of the first reported deaths – two girls – as I was writing the photo caption.
We turned in the paper not terribly late. No government reports with confirmed fatality numbers had been issued yet. The reporter got me set up on twitter and showed me the #crtemblor hashmark. We debriefed the issue, teased the editor for having jumped under his desk, and went home.
The next day, our staff reporter and photographer went out at 6:30 am. The intern reporter and photog left an hour or so later, while the online editor and I sifted through different reports of the morning. It was looking like most of the people had died in the town right by the epicenter in landslides, which had also wiped out the main roads. The two girls who had died were roadside candy-sellers who'd been swept up in a landslide. Two different government agencies were reporting death statistics and only one of them had a spokesperson who would pick up his phone.
By mid-morning, the death toll was by most accounts at 15 when our reporter got wind of two more bodies they'd recovered. I called the editor, who was still at home, and asked him if we should go and report a death toll of 17, noting that we'd be the first to do so. He said ok. I emailed him an hour later and asked him if he was coming in. "Yeah, why?" he responded. Most other media took a couple hours, and for a bit an LA Times blog was quoting our 17.
The editor came in at 1 pm and online ed and I briefed him on bits, and the reporters called in a couple times, too. We heard that private helicopter companies were charging hundreds of dollars per person for an evacuation to tourists who'd been stranded at a popular hotel that'd been right near the epicenter. I called one of the companies posing as a distraught gringa who had a sister at the hotel who needed to be evacuated and they quoted me $600. A Tico paper quoted up to $1,700, but, from what we heard, that was the rate for one helicopter evacuation for four people.
One television presenter, when queried as to where she was during the quake, said she was at the salon getting her nails done when all the old ladies screamed. She likes earthquakes because people really overreact and she thinks it's funny. They even had to give one lady Baileys with ice and white wine [to calm her down]. She thought it was so much fun. Everything was falling in the salon. She would have rather been on the beach in a red thong. Really fun.
At 3 pm, all the media were at a secondary airport outside the city where evacuees were landing when a storehouse, full of Red Cross supplies, down the hill exploded. They sent me out to report on it. I got a few furtive shots of the smoking warehouse and one really good shot of the stern fireman coming at me telling me I needed to stop taking pictures. Workers had been welding, ostensibly trying to repair the walls of the warehouse, when sparks caught on the foam mattresses stored there. I found the president of the National Emergency Commission, asked him for the most recent death toll. He told me 15.
I got back to the office at about 5, right as the editor was leaving for the weekend. The interns, who were on their first week, were still out. The others were back at the office. The government agencies had nominated the (completely inept) crime police to handle the bodies and the official death count. I called a dozen foreign embassies to confirm they had no reports of injuries or deaths, and responded to more letters to the editor while waiting for the stories to come in for edit and listening to Turn on the Bright Lights, which was in hindsight not a good listening choice for that day.
The online editor and I went to work on the stories reporters had turned in for the online edition. I edited the intern's story, which included a quote from one "Louise Alce." We turned in that day's Daily Page at midnight. The photographer finished editing two dozen photos for a photo essay, and he and I wrote captions until 1 am.
I took a cab home. I got back and realized I hadn't eaten since that morning. I pulled out a pack of Ramen, curled up, and ate it on the couch while poring through all the reports people were posting online. I looked through our photo essay one more time and went to bed. The next day I pitched the story of the extorting helicopter companies to a few U.S. outlets, but no one bit. The reporter got a letter into that LA Times blog and wrote on his own.
*
For our next weekly print edition, we had all the requisite pieces: field reports from the emergency tent cities, an interview with the government official saying how most of the city would have been flattened if the quake had been centered in San José, projected losses to the agriculture sector, the role Twitter & Co. played in it all, an interview with the woman whose husband and three children were among the dead, and a photo page. The final official death toll was 23, with seven who were never found or confirmed dead.
I did the article on the science on the quake. While interviewing a USGS geologist in Denver, I accidentally dropped "logarithm" in a follow-up question to him, and he got really excited and started asking me if have scientific background because most journalists' questions are really superficial but I seemed to really know what I was talking about and where did had I gone to school and what had I majored in? Poli sci and philosophy, mae. He sent me a great graphic that detailed all the plates and fault lines that unite to make Costa Rica a "diffuse" and "highly" seismic zone.
The manager of the paper let us all know that there was a second exit through the advertising office, and they'd moved the desks to accommodate that. There was one bit of levity from the earthquake. It got remixed, naturally. On Sunday, my downloads refreshed and I got Live at the Old Quarter.
*
Monday night there were three aftershocks, and I felt all of them. Normally, I sleep on my stomach, but that night I was lying on my back. I felt the second one as I was going to sleep. They weren't strong, but I knew they were aftershocks and not trucks going by on the street up above rattling the thin walls and window panes. Once they passed, I looked at that ceiling and thought about it falling down on me. I wasn't sure if it would be strong enough to seriously injure me.
I tried very hard to figure out how I would know if an earthquake were serious enough to duck for cover. The doorway was too far away, but I had a hard time believing my red metal twin bed would give me much more protection even if I could get under it in enough time. Would it be better to flip over on my stomach and let things try and shield my neck with my hands, or curl up in a fetal position and try to get my pillow over my head? I figured it was a question of which one I could do more quickly. But this was all probably moot, since the floor would probably cave through too, what with its airy slats that let in light from the open-air garage below, in which case it'd be better for me to stay on top of my mattress if we were to go falling to the cement below. I thought about this for a few hours until I felt the third aftershock at 1 am. It took me two more hours to fall asleep. I woke up at 6 am.
*
Of course, things still shook all the time. For a several weeks, every time a large truck would go by at work, the windows would rattle, and I'd stop typing, hold still, and look at Ichiro to assure myself those rumblings lasted only as long as the truck was passing and were not prolonged. It happened at home, too, what with the big flimsy window panes and vents in the living room that let the trucks' lumbering sound waves come in as easily as they let the cigarette smoke at parties out.
*
There were two more moderate earthquakes, 5.7 and 5.9 in March that we felt. The epicenter, though, was thankfully in the middle of the Golfo Dulce, and no one was hurt, although the bay bubbled for a while as the plates readjusted themselves. I wrote a short, and eventually wandered out to get lunch at 3 pm at a bar where I sat next to old men drinking whiskey and watched a Champions League match.
*
It's been a year since the main quake. Compared to Haiti or China or Pakistan, it is nothing. I have anxieties; they have horror. But a year later, even though I'm long gone from San José, I remember all of this, and not from any notes. There was a draft lingering, but it only had links to the Cinchona blog and the jueputa video. The rest of it and all the feelings of being utterly small and realizing the awesome power of a mantle that can literally pull the ground out from under you and everyone around you regardless of the best laid plans, those stay crystallized.
I eventually threw away the bobblehead.
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