An earthquake of magnitude 4.8 shook Granada this Tuesday, where the tremor was felt strongly in different parts of the province. "It was as if they had dropped a bomb, the noise is very loud," Ángela Ayala told 20minutos about the moment of the earthquake, while checking whether it caused personal or material damage.
Ayala says that during the earthquake "everything started to move" and that the tremor is accompanied by a loud noise. "You could hear the movement of the rocks below, like thunder, as if the plates were moving underneath you," he describes. "There has been a lot of notice on the street."
The 25-year-old was in a supermarket when the tremor began, where she claims that some walls have cracked and numerous products have ended up on the floor. "The beverage aisle was impossible to pass. In addition, everything that is shampoos and so on has fallen," he says.
"My legs have started to shiver"
Fear has spread quickly among those who were in the establishment: "Everyone started screaming, they left their cars and everyone ran away."
"It was very strong and it seemed like it was going to get worse, people got scared, but suddenly it stopped," adds Ayala, who admits to having been "very scared": "My legs started to shiver."
Ayala assures that he has also observed damage in some streets, which have been sealed due to the detachment of elements from the facades. "Parts of balconies, bricks have fallen... Also in the churches, the decorations have fallen," he says, although he specifies that "no building as such has fallen."
According to his calculations, the most intense part of the earthquake lasted "three or four seconds", although, once on the street, they felt a new tremor: "It was leaving the supermarket and there was another one."
The earthquake empties a cafeteria in seconds
Ayala's sister, Emma, has also told 20minutos how she experienced the earthquake while having breakfast with her mother in a cafeteria. "Suddenly it sounded like a bomb had fallen. Absolutely everything moved, the lamps, the coffees fell...", he remembers.
The tremor caused the establishment to quickly empty. "The older ladies came out screaming, there were children crying... Everyone ran away. I left my bag because I also left very quickly," she explains. The waitresses also left the premises: "The cafeteria emptied, absolutely everyone left."
"The feeling was that it lifted us off the ground"
The owner of Café Fútbol, which is located in the central Mariana Pineda square, has also told 20minutos about his experience at the time of the earthquake. "A lot of fear, a lot of movement. The feeling was that the ground was lifting us," he explains. In his establishment, however, no objects fell from the shelves.
Among the clients there were different reactions: "There were very scared people, but others were calmer." Even so, he assures that the general feeling was one of fright. In his case, the first movement was the one that impressed him the most: "It lifted me off the ground."
The earthquake from the epicenter
Marta Camisón has experienced the earthquake from Gójar, the Granada town where the epicenter was located, where she was at her partner's house. She was alone in the kitchen, on the ground floor, while her partner slept upstairs. "The house started to shake a lot. It was a super strange, super strange feeling," he remembers, still with a trembling voice.
The first tremor surprised her and she admits to having been completely blocked. "I didn't know how to react. I didn't know how to do what they say about getting under a table, I was completely shocked," he explains. His first impulse was to go up to check on his partner, although he did not manage to do so because the movement ended earlier. "Now I think about it and the truth is that I reacted terribly," he admits.
Camisón assures that in the area some chimneys have detached and cracks have appeared. "Looking down the street, it's true that everything remains more or less the same and nothing seems to have happened at first glance, but there are cracks everywhere," he points out. "Now everyone is on the street. It seems like nothing happened, but I'm still scared."
"It has been horrible, it is a feeling that I personally will never forget. I still have a lump in my throat and goosebumps"
The succession of movements has also increased their confusion. "It wasn't just one, between the first one and the aftershocks, I no longer knew what an earthquake was and what an aftershock was," he says. "It has been horrible, it is a feeling that I personally will never forget. I still have a lump in my throat and goosebumps."
The tension transferred to hospitals
The first tremor surprised Marta Seijo, a 25-year-old doctor, while she was having breakfast in a cafeteria with four friends. "It was strange, first something sounded that I don't know how to explain, like from inside the Earth, a millisecond before everything started to move," he says. While some people left the establishment, she remained paralyzed: "I literally couldn't move, I held on to the person next to me until he passed."
Once finished, Seijo went to the hospital to work, where he was surprised by the following tremors. "People were very stressed, crying... A lot of anxiety attacks," he says. The doctor is rotating in radiology, located on one of the lower floors: "The higher up you are, the more noticeable it is, but when you are below you are afraid that the building will fall on top of you."
After the earthquakes, all non-urgent activity has been suspended in the two public hospitals of Granada - Hospital Universitario Virgen de las Nieves and Hospital Universitario Clínico San Cecilio - and staff on duty and services that cannot be postponed have been maintained. "First it was just oncology and then all non-urgent activity was cancelled," explains Seijo, who was sent home after the suspension of consultations. The afternoon activity has also been canceled and they are waiting to find out what will happen this Wednesday.
Among the actions that have continued was care for a patient who had suffered a stroke and needed urgent intervention to remove a thrombus. "This has to be done urgently, but if there is just a tremor there is a risk of injuring an artery," he explains. Given this situation, he assures that they had to go down to a small room on the -1 floor to perform the procedure.
