(Associated Press)
ANCHORAGE, AK – A former Mona resident is talking about the terrifying panic she says she felt while the ground shook under her. She was near the epicenter of the 7.0 magnitude Alaska earthquake.
Other quakes start slow and get stronger. Not this one. Wendy Bringhurst lives in Eagle River, near Anchorage. She says this one was violent right away.
“Things just started falling off walls. Furniture was swaying. A very heavy dresser tipped over, almost on me,” she says, adding, “It just kept going and going and we could hear things falling and breaking.”
The power has been out for hours and some of the major bridges that let her get to Anchorage have been closed. She says this is the worst kind of disaster to happen in Alaska in the winter.
Bringhurst had a chance to see the damage to her home.
“We have a lot of cracks in our walls. We have a lot of ground that moved around the foundation of our home,” she says.
Even though her family is fine, physically, their nerves are still fried. There have been dozens of aftershocks, which makes it hard for people to calm down.
“Every time I hear that sound, I think it’s going to get as bad as the first one. We saw an alert on our phone that said an aftershock could be worse than the initial one.”