By Gregory Childress
gchildress@heraldsun.com; 419-6645
CHAPEL HILL -- When UNC doctoral student Laura Wagner felt the magnitude-7.0 earthquake that leveled Port-au Prince, she knew right away what was happening.
Having grown up in San Francisco, Wagner was well-schooled in earthquakes.
"I knew what it was," Wagner said. "The first thing I thought was, 'Oh, an earthquake, that's interesting."
She then thought about what she should do next to protect herself. For the answer to that question, she relied on lessons learned in elementary school.
"They say duck and cover, stand in the doorway," Wagner said. "From elementary school, they had us do earthquake drills, being from San Francisco."
So, Wagner found herself standing in the doorway between the kitchen and the hallway in a house where she was renting a room.
"Then the house fell down," Wagner said. "I'm alive. So I think the doorway was a lucky enough place to stand."
Wagner, her landlord and another woman who lived and worked in the house were trapped for what she believes was 90 minutes.
She and the landlord, who were screaming for help, were discovered and rescued by a man who worked at the house. He used a regular hammer to dig them from the rubble. The third woman was killed.
While buried under the concrete and timber, Wagner admitted to second-guessing her decision to remain in the house.
"I'm not so sure that [running outside] would have been a good idea because all of the walls outside were also falling," Wagner said. "Now that I'm alive, I don't have second thoughts about it anymore."
Wagner suffered nerve damage to her left hand, bruises and scrapes, but is otherwise doing well.
While still on the ground in Haiti last week, Wagner told a reporter for MSNBC that she wished for quick death while under the rubble.
But she said Wednesday that she wasn't wishing for death only that death would come quickly if it was inevitable.
"I didn't want to die," she said. "I assumed that I would die and so wanted it to be over already. I wanted to live. I just figured that I wouldn't."
