A stalker of the USGS website, that is.

So, the Little Guy is living in Shaanxi Province.  Hanzhong City, to be precise.  You can see where Hanzhong is in relation to last week’s epicenter on this map:

This map is a representation of the number of earthquakes over 4.0 for the week period beginning with the first big quake:

Hanzhong is in the green area southwest of Xi’an.  The biggest square on the map represents the 7.9 quake.  You can see how many of the aftershocks, a lot of them being over 5.0, have been much closer to Hanzhong than the original quake.  There is some crazy number floating around of thousands of aftershocks, but 78 strong aftershocks seems to be quite a lot.

When I first hear about the earthquake, I looked on the map, and thought that he was far enough away that there wouldn‘t be much danger of damage.  I even measured the distance.  Of course, like a big dummy, I didn‘t look at the scale right, and I was measuring the distance in km instead of miles.  Once I converted to miles, and once some of these aftershocks started popping up closer, it began to dawn on me that the Little Guy was in much more danger than I first thought.

Needless to say, last week was a bit nerve-racking.  We started to hear through the SWI parent’s group that the kids were all okay, but living outside in tents just to be safe.  Then we heard that there were cracks in some of the building walls, so they were living outside because they weren‘t sure of the safety of the buildings.  Next we heard that they had sustained major damage.  Then we heard that the damage was minor.

Throughout all of that, we never heard of any injuries; which was a huge relief.  But I gotta tell you, it’s not fun looking at all this information and watching the damage and casualty reports and not being able to see what is going on with your child.  I’ve been hit square in the head with just how much of an information junkie I am, how much I need to see with my own eyes or hear with my own ears to believe that something is true.  And I still haven’t had anyone say to me, your child?  He’s fine.  All we’ve gotten is that the kids are okay.

Since there was nothing constructive that I could do, I began stalking the US Geological Survey site.  I have alerts emailed to me of any quake over 5.0 in the area.  I check the site all the time anyway.  When a 6.0 quake showed up Saturday afternoon, I yelled.  Loudly.  For a long time.  Multiple really, really bad words.  Perhaps you heard me?

Mr. T, ever the pragmatic one, insisted that the Little Guy had survived quite a few troubles in his short 3 1/2 years on this earth, and that this thing wasn‘t going to get him either.  He did this whenever I was frantic about whether they had any clean water to drink, or whenever I was beside myself about the fact that we were sitting in a house, and he was sleeping in a tent.  Gah.

I’m hoping that we get an update from our agency sooner rather than later.  I hope the kids and caregivers in all the affected SWI‘s get what they need, and that they stay safe.  I hope we’ve seen the worst of the quakes pass.  I hope for some measure of peace for all of the survivors.

I hope our Little Guy is okay.