Will Pieschel was at his office in downtown Tokyo Friday afternoon when the building began to shake. Pieschel had ridden out earthquakes before; he was used to it. Each employee at PricewaterhouseCoopers, a consulting firm, has an earthquake kit nearby — water, a power bar, helmet and, in the event they get trapped under rubble, a whistle to signal for help.
For several hours on Friday, Pieschel and his coworkers felt small earthquakes. When the last quake started, it was different. For the first time, it seemed like the building would never stop shaking.
Will Pieschel”s parents, Steve and Bridget Pieschel of Columbus, woke up to news of the 8.9-magnitude earthquake.
“One of the things my husband and I do in the mornings, the first thing we do is turn on CNN. My husband turned on the news, and then he ran in and turned on the news in the bedroom and said, ”You need to see this,”” Bridget Pieschel recalled Friday afternoon.
Eventually, she realized she was watching footage of a quake-shaken Japan, where her son works as an accountant.
Frightened but hopeful, she rushed to her computer.
“I nearly fainted, but I checked my e-mail because I thought maybe he had sent me something,” she said.
Will Pieschel had e-mailed 30 minutes after the earthquake: He was alive.
He and his coworkers were stranded at the office building. Trains and subways were down; taxis were not running. Highways had not yet been checked for stability. He would be in touch later.
“Anyone who works in downtown Tokyo were still in downtown Tokyo. They were stuck there,” Bridget Pieschel said.
Bridget Pieschel remained cautiously optimistic after getting word from her son. She got another e-mail from him at about 1 p.m. Friday. Will Pieschel said he would call when the sun came up there.
“I can”t explain how relieved I am, but I am still concerned,” she said Friday afternoon. “There”s still a lot of aftershocks, and I don”t know how structurally sound the buildings are.”
The earthquake struck at about 3 p.m. in Tokyo.
By 8 a.m. Saturday Tokyo time (6 p.m. Friday in Columbus), Bridget Pieschel got the call she had been waiting for.
“I was really glad to hear Will”s voice when he called …” Bridget Pieschel wrote in an e-mail.
He and his coworkers slept in the building, on the floor and in their chairs. (He was glad he kept a toothbrush at work.)
He planned to work on the company”s tax returns until about 5 or 6 p.m. and, if transportation was still down, walk 45 minutes to his apartment. He had heard there was electricity in his neighborhood.
“A few years ago, when Will was teaching English in Niigata, Japan, he went through a quake that was nearly a 7 magnitude, and thought that was pretty frightening,” Bridget Pieschel wrote, “but now he realizes that quake was nothing compared to what he went through (Friday).”
Will Pieschel, 30, has been in Japan for about five years. He moved to Japan to teach English classes through the Japanese Exchange and Teaching program. He then took a job in the business world.
Mary Simmons, whose parents are Jimmy and Debbie Simmons of Columbus, also is in Japan, taught English as part of JET, but is currently working for a law firm there. Will Pieschel told his mother he had talked to Simmons, and she was fine.
Mary Simmons lived in an older part of Tokyo, where the buildings were more structurally sound, Jimmy Simmons said. Mary Simmons has an aunt, also named Mary, who lives on the waterfront in San Francisco. She was bracing for the tsunami, evoked by the quake.
Tracey Seals, 20, a Mississippi University for Women sophomore living in Tokyo, told her mother, Tina Seals of Columbus, via video chat, that she could still feel the earthquake aftershocks hours later.
Seals is attending a language school in Tokyo, about 200 miles from the radius of one of the largest earthquakes in history.
Tracey Seals, an art major who was taking a semester off, plans to stay in Tokyo through April 2, when she had been scheduled to return to Columbus. She”s been in Japan since August.
Former Columbus Air Force Base instructor pilots Jay Hansen and Wesley Hales, who are stationed in Japan, notified friends and family via Facebook that they were OK. The Hales are in Yokota, Japan; the Hansens are in Fussa, (Tokyo) Japan.
The earthquake and resulting tsunami have killed at least 1,000 people.
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 39 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 39 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
