Earth quakes are national disasters and associated with lot of pain and suffering. It is not a good thing to happen. I have experienced a significant shake once, but not severe enough to cause any casualties.
Our operation theatre is on the top floor of an eight story building. The time when I experienced the quake, we were in theatre. We had just completed a surgery and I was accompanying the patient to the recovery room. Then we felt the shake. It was a swinging movement, I felt like the tall building swinging to both sides, the theatre lights hanging from the roof moved away form focus, the small trollies with rollers moved a bit two and fro. A lightning of panic stroked and the people started running outside. The interesting thing was the expression of the surgeons and staff who were performing surgery in other theatre rooms. They were standing perplexed, waiting for the trembling to subside.
This time during the disaster in Nepal, some trembling were felt in our hospital too. I was far away at my home, but my colleague told me about what happened here. It was our breast cancer clinic day. He was giving first dose chemotherapy for a patient when the building started to shake. The poor patient lying flat on bed saw the fan on roof swing here and there, felt the shaking movement of bed, thought it was the effect of the chemo medicine!
The panicked people started to make noise and rush outside. Our professor was persuading people to sit at their place and be calm. He said to the residents 'If we are going to die, let us die doing our job'. Fortunately no one was injured.