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Pottsville native living in Virginia recalls quake experience

Pottsville native Melissa White Van Vickle said it was interesting to experience Tuesday's earthquake in Virginia, but she's not hoping for another one anytime soon.

Van Vickle, 33, now lives in Mineral, Va., near the epicenter of Tuesday's magnitude-5.8 quake. She was doing computer work in a lab at J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College in Richmond, Va., when the earthquake struck.

She didn't realize at first that the shaking was an earthquake but "it was obvious it was something different," she said, noting that she had never experienced an earthquake.

"I felt the room shake. We all were like kind of looking at each other," she said of the roughly 30 people who were in the lab with her.

"It was kind of scary," she said, but "it was a cool experience to be able to experience it."

Her thoughts immediately turned to her family in Mineral.

"I pretty much hopped up and grabbed my books and everything," she said. Outside, people were using cellphones to try to reach loved ones.

"People weren't really frantic or anything. We just couldn't believe it," she said.

Before driving the hour to her house, she spoke with her husband, Trenton, 36, who was working in Winchester, Va., and made sure he was OK. But it took her "at least 20 minutes" and several phone calls to reach the baby-sitter in Mineral. Her son, Reid, 3, was safe and sound.

"My son was sleeping. He slept through the whole thing," she said.

When she got home, she saw books that had fallen from the shelves and several broken picture frames. The large appliances in the kitchen had also moved.

"The (refrigerator) had come out from the wall probably 10 inches. The range had come out of the wall," she said.

The family's dogs were OK but one of the three family cats hasn't been found. She also said the house might have sustained some damage, since they noticed a crack in one of the walls.

Later Tuesday, she spoke with her parents, Deborah Kocher and David White, who live in Pottsville, and her sister in New York, all of whom were fine.

Hinche Scholars Start Classes at J. Sargeant Reynolds « Hinche ...

Although our mission is partially complete (the Hinche Scholars are now in the U.S. and they have recommenced their studies) we still very much need your help!  Without additional funding, these students may not be able to fully complete their studies. Please assist in any way that you can – whether financial contributions ( www.ihaveadreamrichmond.org ) or in-kind donations – everything will help! Side view of the destroyed National Cathedral in PAP. The widespread death and destruction in Port-au-Prince will forever be remembered by everyone in Haiti. Though Haiti’s infrastructure may currently be destroyed, we’re working to ensure that the next generation’s intellectual infrastructure will be stronger than ever.

The Hinche Scholars project was founded by Danny Yates, a William and Mary student who has travelled to Haiti several times as a guide and translator for Catholic churches in the Diocese of Richmond. On January 12, 2010, Danny was in Haiti when the tragic “seisme” ravaged this Caribbean nation. In Port-au-Prince, he witnessed firsthand the death, destruction, and unparalleled scope of this tragedy. Danny was particularly shocked by the indescribable level of catastrophic loss human and material in the government, university and medical sectors. As Haiti begins to “pick up the pieces,” Danny and his team firmly believe that higher education is the only sustainable and successful path to recovery.

Now, more than four months since the earthquake, international and domestic Haiti experts agree that one of the country’s greatest crises is the leadership void. Thousands of Haitian political leaders, doctors, nurses, NGO workers, engineers, attorneys, and college students perished on January 12. Nearly all of Haiti’s universities were utterly demolished. Haitian leaders estimate it will take decades for the higher education system to return to pre-quake capacity. Ten years from now, Haiti will lack the next generation of leaders so desperately needed to rebuild.

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