Delco student in Japan: 'It shook for 5 minutes'

Delaware County resident Samantha Landau was outside Tokyo when the earthquake struck today.

In an e-mail to her father David Landau, chairman of the county's Democratic Party, the PhD candidate on comparative literature who has been teaching and studying in Japan for 4 1/2 years said she walking home about 2:45 p.m. when she noted "a large, funny-looking cloud in the sky."

Landau, 27, of Wallingford, continued:

"The sky just looked so weird, I couldn't get it out of my head. And I'd had this feeling of foreboding since yesterday, but I thought it was about this lecture that I gave this morning, feeling unprepared and such. So then I get off the train, ride my bike home fast, thinking I should beat the rain because I have no umbrella. And just as I get to this cross-street before my street, I go past a parking lot and all the cars' alarms start honking! And I'm thinking hell, I'm not close enough to make them go off by touching them ... and then I notice the car nearest me is kind of bouncing, so I figure there's a person inside honking rudely until I look and there's NO ONE there.

"Then I notice the buildings are swaying and I can't ride my bicycle properly and I figure it's from lack of sleep until I see the telephone polls swaying and realize it's an earthquake. We have small ones pretty frequently, so I figured it would stop after 30 seconds but it kept going.

"Then all the people from the office buildings started streaming out ... and it kept shaking ... It shook for like 5 minutes. Everything stood still and everyone was pretty much freaking out. After it calmed down for a minute, I made my way over to the farm that's near my house and stayed there through a couple of the bigger aftershocks (there's nothing around there to fall on me so it's very safe). Then I went home for a bit and talked to Deb, who told me how big the earthquake had actually been and that there were tsunami warnings ... Seeking more information I went to school and stayed there (it's the designated evacuation facility anyways, so it was a good place to be). By 8 p.m. they were sending those of us home who could leave; all train service had been stopped in Tokyo and multiple tsunamis had hit places further north in Japan. The devastation was apocalyptic, and it just continues ... You should see some of the damage the quake caused. One road literally looks like that scene in Superman where the California road just breaks in half and the car almost falls in ... "

"Anyway to sum it up, I'm just so freaking lucky. It hit as I came home so I didn't' get stuck downtown and have to walk 8 hours back and my area has power and we're up on a plateau so it's safe from tsunamis ... I think after this experience, though, I will not be moving to other real estate. This area is just so good in so many, many ways."