OFW’s tale: Surviving Taiwan’s earthquake

An overseas Filipino worker (OFW) from Hualien County in Taiwan recounted his frightful experience following Wednesday morning’s 7.4 magnitude earthquake.

In a radio interview, Bryan Roger Calocar said he had just finished his shift and was preparing breakfast when the earthquake struck just before 8 a.m.

“Here in Taiwan, when there’s such a calamity, they have an alert on the cellphone. Once it vibrates, it includes the impact of the earthquake,” Calocar said.

He said: “At first, it was quite strong, and since we’re used to it, we just ignored it. But the second impact was really strong and that’s when we decided to go down and saw other people also going down the stairs.”

Calocar said there were aftershocks still rocking Taiwan after the quake.

“Based on the government’s record, there were 28 aftershocks, but what we are saying is that the government declared 48 aftershocks,” he said.

“But it wasn’t finished yet because the government issued another alert by 10 a.m. that there would be another strong aftershock. So we went down again at 10 a.m., but there was nothing. But when we went up at around 10:20 a.m., there was an aftershock so people started coming down again,” he said.

Calocar said they are slowly going back to work. He added he had no plans to return to the Philippines just yet.

“No one is planning to go home because we still need a job for our family, so let’s see. Maybe we just need to take care of ourselves more and follow safety precautions,” he added.

According to the Department of Migrant Workers, the tremor affected about 5,000 Filipinos in Taiwan. There are 159,480 Filipinos in Taiwan, and 150,666 of them are OFWs.

The death toll from Wednesday’s earthquake, the strongest to hit Taiwan in 25 years, rose to 12, with over 1,000 people injured.