‘It feels like the building beneath you turns to liquid’published at 16:25 BST
Image source, Felix UmlandFelix Umland, a German photography student in Japan was on the 13th floor of a hotel in Kagoshima, about 175km from the epicentre, when the Japan earthquake struck.
He tells BBC Newshour about the moment the earthquake started: “My phone started blaring an earthquake warning. I was just looking at my phone thinking I don’t know what to do now… Five seconds later everything started shaking.”
“I just heard glasses flying in the kitchen and everything in the kitchen started breaking,” he says.
“There’s not much you can do, it’s a pretty hopeless situation. You’re looking around waiting for it to stop.”
Umland adds that although buildings are built to move with the Earth, “it feels like the building beneath you turns into liquid. It’s a very surreal feeling”.
“The solid ground just suddenly turned into a mass that was moving.”
