24 Hours Well Spent at Changi International Airport After a 8.0 Magnitude Earthquake

[manojodungat]

On 12th May, 2008 at 2.30pm I was in a class room on the 5th floor teaching chemistry when I experienced the worst in my life, the deadly Sichuan Earthquake of 8.0 magnitudes. After the initial shock, as I was guiding my students to the ground floor, I made sure my wify too accompanied us with all that dust and horrifying loud sound all around.

2008 Sichuan earthquake - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
We couldn't sleep not even stay inside our apartment due to severe aftershocks. The football ground was the only safer option for people to take rest peacefully.



After about a week long haunting moments, our company decided to send us back home for an early vacation. Our company managed to fly us via Singapore but with a 24 hour lay over time. We didn't have any second thought as we just wanted to get to a safer place. We had reserved a room in Ambassador Transit Hotel at Changi Airport, Singapore. On reaching there in the evening, we did have a well deserved peaceful sleep for about ten hours. Our next flight to Kochi was in the evening at around 20.00 next day as i remember.

Transit Hotel - Changi Airport

We woke up more relaxed in the morning but still had about 14 hours before our next flight. We got ready lazily thinking of how to spend the whole day in the airport and walked out of the transit hotel for breakfast.

After the breakfast we decided to walk around a bit .The usual shopping places didn't impress us much.But what we enjoyed the most on that day was the pure magic of nature,thanks to the airport authorities to maintain it so well.

Let the pictures speak...for pure nature lovers

 

[freakdude]

Re: 24 Hours Well Spent at Changi International Airport

Must have been one hell of an escape!!!!! Would definitely like to know about it in more details in your words as you had a first hand experience. What intrigues me is that the EQ was in 2008 and you mention 2009 or was it a typo. BTW, the pics are nice.

freakdude.

 

[Superbad]

Re: 24 Hours Well Spent at Changi International Airport

Maybe OT but i find in the pictures there is a bit of yellowish hue in the pictures.

Is the yellowish tinge present in the atmosphere of china/province or was there some twilight like scenario or photo effects?

 

[manojodungat]

Re: 24 Hours Well Spent at Changi International Airport

Maybe OT but i find in the pictures there is a bit of yellowish hue in the pictures.

Is the yellowish tinge present in the atmosphere of china/province or was there some twilight like scenario or photo effects?

All those pictures were taken inside one of the three terminals at the Singapore Airport not china.So the external lights would have affected and i am just a beginner when it comes to photography and various setting of my D3100

 

[Superbad]

Re: 24 Hours Well Spent at Changi International Airport

All those pictures were taken inside one of the three terminals at the Singapore Airport not china.So the external lights would have affected and i am just a beginner when it comes to photography and various setting of my D3100

ok! i felt the plantation was outside the airport.

then the pictures look fine.

 

[manojodungat]

Re: 24 Hours Well Spent at Changi International Airport

Must have been one hell of an escape!!!!! Would definitely like to know about it in more details in your words as you had a first hand experience. What intrigues me is that the EQ was in 2008 and you mention 2009 or was it a typo. BTW, the pics are nice.

freakdude.

Oops!. corrected the year.Thanks freakdude for pointing it out.My personal experience with the EQ is due.

 

[manojodungat]

Re: 24 Hours Well Spent at Changi International Airport

continue...

Actually we were based in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province, about 80km away from the Epicenter of the earthquake, Wenchuan. Chengdu is hometown of the Giant Panda. The Panda is a national treasure, and has been lovingly referred to as the hermit of the bamboo forest because in its natural habitat, it dwells alone for most of its life. Panda is one of the world’s rarest animals.

Welcome to Chengdu Panda Base

Chengdu Panda Breeding and Research Center, Sichuan

A few pictures from Chengdu Panda Breeding and Research Center






Coming back to the EQ experience , it all started as some sort of banging sound. Initially I thought it could be a group of students playing drums but soon realized that it was something more dramatic and scary.

The rattling sound got heavier coupled with everything around and the building as a whole beginning to shake. It was a big and first time in life kind of Shock for me. Students started rushing out of their classrooms in panic. Some of them rushed to toilets in their respective floors. Within no time all the corridors were overcrowded and the mass began to move down the stairs. I saw my wify at the other end of the big building in the crowd. I screamed in vain to tell her to find the nearest exit to go down to the ground floor.
As we climbed down the stairs, I saw the concrete getting ruptured and all of a sudden it became dusty around.

to continue....

 

[manojodungat]

Re: 24 Hours Well Spent at Changi International Airport

continued..

I thought we wouldn’t survive. We manage to reach the ground floor and run to the open area in front of the main building. we were continuously screaming to make sure nobody jumped down out of windows. But still I found some students doing that from the first floor and luckily they were unhurt.

What impressed me was that in no time the fire and rescue and some security personals arrived and got into the action and guided us to the safer place. Soon first Earth Tremors calmed down. The tents were brought and the restricted areas were marked but the telephone lines were disconnected.later I was told that it was intentional to stop people pressing panic buttons] No telephone and no internet and no way to communicate with the outer world especially to our parents and relatives back home.The service were restored in two to three days though.

It was relieving to know that there wasn’t any causalities from our school. Within hours the President of Republic of China Mr. Hu Jintao and Premier Mr. Wen Jiabao lead the rescue operations in tandem standing there at the site [epicenter].The way they inspired the army and people at rescue work was commendable indeed, from an outsider point of view.
A few pictures on the EQ from Web.







From the first day for a week we spend most of our time with our lovely students. During those days we did try pop in to our apartment and watched CCTV-9 to see the aftermath of the massive Earthquake.

We were getting used to those innumerable after shocks and the company decided to resume classes as some of our senior students were to take their exams conducted by Cambridge University. After a week we went back to the classes just to experience another big after shock. No more we could continue teaching .The students were sent to Nanjing to take their exams and we flew back home.

That all what I recollect and i hope i can forget it soon as i started developing panic attacks a few months later.

Time for some more refreshing pictures of Changi-the singapore airport ,the route we took to escaped after that EQ.


















thank you all for reading.

 

[manojodungat]

Re: 24 Hours Well Spent at Changi International Airport After a 8.0 Magnitude Earthqu

Changi Airport in Singapore has been voted the World's Best Airport by air travellers for the second year in a row at the 2014 World Airport Awards, held at Passenger Terminal EXPO in Barcelona, Spain

WORLD AIRPORT AWARDS
The World Airport Awards are the most prestigious accolades for the airport industry, voted by customers in the largest, annual global airport customer satisfaction survey. The survey and awards process is totally independent and guaranteed free of any airport influence or interference in final results.

The World Airport Awards are based on 12.85 million customer nominations across 110 nationalities of air travellers, and included 410 airports worldwide. The survey evaluates customer satisfaction across 39 key performance indicators for airport service and product - from check-in, arrivals, transfers, shopping, security and immigration, through to departure at the gate

The World's Best Airports 2014

1. Singapore Changi Airport
2. Incheon International Airport
3. Munich Airport
4. Hong Kong International Airport
5. Amsterdam Schiphol Airport
6. Tokyo International Airport Haneda
7. Beijing Capital International Airport
8. Zurich Airport
9. Vancouver International Airport
10. London Heathrow Airport