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A New Zealand teacher living in China is sheltering in a school playground with hundreds of students following the country's huge earthquake.
Jacob Daniels has taught English for several years in the city of Mianyang, about 125km from the worst-affected areas near the epicentre of the quake.
The
35-year-old told the Herald late last night he was walking back into the school after lunch on Monday when the quake hit.
"It went for less than a minute. It started getting a bit scary when stuff started falling off the building like tiles and things.
"The kids were quite scared, they were screaming and shouting. We had to calm them down." When the aftershocks hit they cried again."
Mr Daniels went to his apartment, about two minutes down the road, to get blankets and a change of clothes.
About 3000 students and teachers camped at the school on Monday night, using umbrellas and bamboo as shelter. Mr Daniels said there were only a few hundred camping at the school last night.
"I went into the Mianyang town centre. There are a lot of people camping out in parks and on the streets ... It's raining a bit but it's still quite warm because it's summer here."
His father, Ken Daniels of Wellington, said he spent most of Monday night calling his son's cellphone but getting no answer.
"The news got worse and worse. Especially when you hear of the school that collapsed with 900 trapped. It was right in the area and we weren't sure whether it was his school, whether he was alive or dead."
News that his son was safe came after one of his five other sons called Jacob from London and spoke to him while he was waiting in the paddock.
Others who experienced the earthquake describe scenes of chaos as thousands fled shaking buildings and experienced aftershocks, which continued last night.
Martin Fuller, whose brother lives in Auckland, thought someone was rattling his bicycle while he was stopped at a red light in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, where he has lived for five years.
He looked behind expecting to see a truck blasting from a nearby subway tunnel under construction.
"In the next split seconds there was pandemonium as concrete and windows started shattering, falling to the ground. Instantly people were in a panic. So was I, as I was under some rather big buildings," he said.
"Traffic came to a quick standstill and crowds of people from all the buildings came into the street looking around quite bewildered, and panic set in quite fast."
Alannah Manson, an 18-year-old New Zealand exchange student living in Chongqing, said she ran down from the ninth floor of the 11-storey building she lives in when the shaking began.
"It felt like the floor had turned into a swing bridge. At first I just thought there was something wrong with the building and it was going to collapse, so it wasn't until we heard the students in the nearby dormitories screaming that I began to think it was an earthquake."
Auckland woman Rico Wang has spoken of how she frantically tried to reach her mother in Chongqing after hearing of the quake.
"Many times I tried, again and again, but couldn't reach her, and I was worried that something had happened to her," said Ms Wang, 24. She got hold of her mother only on her eighth attempt. "I was so happy to hear her voice, I almost cried."
But she still has not been able to contact her aunt and two cousins, whom she calls brothers.
"My mother tells me they are okay, but I think she is just telling me that because she doesn't want me to worry. I am an only child, and my cousins are like my brothers. I am still worried sick about them."
