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Southside students caught in quake terror

Thursday, 22 May 2008

A pair of adventurous cyclists from South Dublin have spoken of their terror after they were caught up in the devastating earthquake that wrought unimaginable destruction and killed tens of thousands of people in China last week.
Since September last year three UCD students - Mark Donlon from Sandyford, Paul Ryan from Dundrum and Conor Rowan from Monks-town - have been cycling from Dublin to Beijing for two charitable causes.
When the disaster hit on Monday May 12, two of the men were in a hostel in the city of Xian, some 600kms from the epicenter of the earthquake.
The third cyclist Paul Ryan had been out visiting the world-renowned terracotta warriors when the quake hit.
Conor Rowan described how the walls of the hostel trembled and how he realised the violent tremors he felt were in fact part of a killer quake.
“The room started to wobble and I initially thought that it was a truck passing nearby causing the room to vibrate,” he recalled this week. “When it persisted I thought it was some construction nearby.

“It was only after seven or eight seconds when an Australian guy leapt up and shouted ‘this is an earthquake’ that I realised what was happening.”
Conor was urged by the Australian man to promptly vacate the building and he joined a melee of dazed and petrified guests in a courtyard outside.
Then he suddenly thought about his companion Mark and some Norwegian girls they had befriended.“Mark had been coming back from the toilet and was bemused as to why he was wobbling,” Conor related. “When the penny dropped he sprinted out of the hostel.
“The hostel faced the old city walls, so while we were safe from the hostel we were standing underneath an ancient 30ft high wall. It was a very strange situation to be in. It felt like we’d gotten onto land after being at sea for too long. We were wondering whether the land was still moving or whether it was just our imagination.”
Conor said they were lucky to escape injury in the quake that measured 7.8 on the Richter scale. Forty five people died in the province of northwest Gansu, which they had just cycled from the previous day.
Late last week the Chinese Government estimated that up to 50,000 people were killed by the natural disaster but aid agencies fear that the eventual toll could be far higher.
The UCD students are appealing to the public to support their chosen charities - UCD Volunteers and ARC cancer support centre.
Anyone can contribute to the Bike to Beijing 2008 project by contacting www.mycharity.ie or AIB Bank also.

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