LAKEPORT — Ever since she was a little girl, Pam Capito has loved pandas. She planned for the “vacation of a lifetime” to see the lovable creatures in their natural, mountainous habitat at the Wolong Giant Panda Reserve in the Sichuan Province in south western China.
The 60-year-old Lakeport resident joined a group of 11 other Americans, who ranged in age from 30 to 79, for a trip that soon turned into a scramble to stay alive.
The earthquake hit shortly after 2 p.m., the worst disaster to hit China in 30 years, 55,740 have been confirmed dead and 25,000 are still missing.
Capito and her group were five miles from the epicenter of the quake at the panda breeding facility, a remote region dotted with tiny villages and a winding river. The sharp face of emerald-green mountains pierce the sky like giant cathedrals on either side of a steep windy road into Wolong.
The birds went quiet, and the 35 pandas, of which 13 were babies, began pacing. Capito recalls thinking they were unhappy, “but they just sensed the earthquake.”
“The roar started, just this horrendous roar. I immediately screamed ?earthquake,” and hung on to a railing. The shaking was so intense, I”ve never felt such shaking ? the ground below me was buckling, just bouncing below me like a bucking bronco. You couldn”t stand,” Capito said.
The group ran from boulders and trees that tumbled down the sheer-mountain face on either side of the reserve, splintering into millions of pieces. They huddled under a building overhang that had columns several feet in circumference. “We were just hoping, praying it wouldn”t cave in. Thank God it didn”t, because that”s what saved us from the everything that was falling around us.”
She thought she would die, and although the earthquake lasted a mere couple of minutes, aftershocks occurred days after the quake, between approximately 5.0 to 6.0 magnitude.
The 7.9-magnitude quake rocked the Sichuan province. The group was trapped at the center for hours until a makeshift ladder was constructed that led to what remained of a bridge leading to the roadway.
“We were covered like dust bunnies, we had twigs in our hair and were just covered in filth, you could hardly breathe there was so much dirt in the air, because so much land had come down from the mountain.”
None in the group were harmed, and reserve leaders began making the one-at-a-time trip across the rickety bridge back to the center to bring baby pandas down to the village, where the group camped out in the bus they came in. The pandas” habitat was largely destroyed.
They had some snacks, and divvied out peanuts and the 24 bottles of water they had brought with them, not knowing whether it would be weeks until they were rescued.
“We would split up the peanuts ? three peanuts here, three peanuts there, and just take sips of water. Those were the best three peanuts I”ve ever had.”
Refugees began streaming in by the hundreds each day, while for three days and three nights Capito, and the rest of the group waited for help.
On the third day, a helicopter arrived, and took the group, in several trips, on the 45-minute ride to Chengdu.
“I was sobbing the whole way. All of the beautiful, green mountains were gone. It was bare, desolate, mudslides everywhere. Entire villages were destroyed. I was so sad to be leaving, going home to be safe, when I was leaving families, mothers without babies in their arms, because their homes had been crushed.”
All of the other tourists went directly home, but Capito was determined to stay for her planned three-week trip.
She and one friend from the original group went to the southern region of China, where she “did a lot of crying ? mostly of relief.” Capito retuned home to Lakeport into the welcoming arms of family and friends on Thursday.
Contact Elizabeth Wilson at ewilson@record-bee.com
