Mexican quake terror

[caption id="attachment_223021" align="aligncenter" width="630"] Farrah Harri and her husband, Gerardo Ortiz
Picture: Facebook[/caption]

It was horrible, horrible, horrible, ex-PE woman tells mom

A former Port Elizabeth woman has described how – just two hours after a national earthquake drill in Mexico – she experienced her first earthquake.

Farrah Harri, 26, formerly of Malabar, was among those in Mexico participating in the annual drill at 11am (Mexican time) on Tuesday to commemorate the devastating Mexico City earthquake of 1985 in which at least 5 000 people died.

Two hours later – and 32 years to the day of that deadly earthquake – another hit, this time a 7.1 magnitude, killing more than 200 people.

Farrah, who teaches English to Grade 7 to 9 pupils at a private school, had just finished a class and was in the teachers’ lounge.

“To be honest, I didn’t even realise what was happening at first,” she said via WhatsApp last night.

“I only realised when the ground was shaking and my colleague pulled me out of the teachers’ lounge.

“At the school, no building material fell, just lunch boxes, coffee cups, and cabinets opened.”

Farrah, a former Volkswagen SA employee, met her husband, Gerardo Ortiz, in Germany while they were working at Volkswagen there.

She moved to Mexico in December and they were married in a civil ceremony in June.