Family from Bengaluru recounts Bangkok earthquake horror

BENGALURU: A Bengaluru couple and their child, who had gone on a trip to Bangkok, recounted their horrible experience of the earthquake, while heaving a sigh of relief that they were somehow able to return safely.

The recent earthquake in Myanmar and Thailand is a testament to human’s strength against nature. A Karnataka couple, Akshay and Jagruti, who narrowly escaped the big disaster, returned to Bengaluru on Saturday.

The couple had travelled to Thailand with their two-year-old son and were staying at a hotel in Bangkok. They enjoyed visiting various tourist destinations in Thailand for four days and reached Bangkok on Friday. The couple, who were supposed to tour Bangkok for another threee days, returned to Bengaluru on Saturday.

After they checked in at a hotel on Friday afternoon, Jagruti experienced an earthquake and a shaky building while she was giving their son a bath.

Jagruti said, recounting the sudden earthquake, “I experienced the hotel where were staying in also shook. At first, we thought there must be some problem with the hotel. But as the tremors grew stronger, we realized it was an earthquake. We grabbed our son with a towel and rushed down from the 10th floor with the child in my arms, hoping to save our lives. It was a chaotic scene, with people running wildly, and we didn’t know what was happening”. Akshay added, “I was sleeping; I heard and felt the tremor. I quickly called my wife and we came out running with luggage and passports. We were in a state of panic, and our only thought was to get out of the hotel and back to our country. We dodn’t even know how we managed to get out of the hotel. The streets were full of people, chaos was all around the building, people were screaming and we did not know what was happening. The way the Earth shook, it is really hard to get it out of our minds”.

The couple expressed their gratitude to God for their narrow escape from death.