Hundreds of Filipinos are living in Ridgecrest, California, one of the areas hardest hit by the 6.4 magnitude earthquake that struck on Thursday.
The latest census figures show 475 Filipinos live in the area and among them is Krista Tizon's family, which owns the Bahay Kubo Filipino restaurant and the Orient Outlet grocery.
"It’s a pretty close community as well. We see a lot of them, most of them are customers. Because it’s a small town, we all know each other, pretty much friends on social media so we’re able to check up on each other there and letting each other know the updates," said Tizon.
Living close to a naval base, Tizon said she didn’t realize at first that it was an earthquake.
"We have a lot of earthquakes but I don’t believe I’ve ever had this. Usually a lot of us don’t think much of earthquakes because they do a lot of testing nearby, the military does a lot of testing nearby. When it first happened, a lot of us actually just thought it was the base and kept going until we realized it was an earthquake," she said.
Tizon was about to open up shop at the restaurant when the earthquake struck.
"I was actually at the restaurant. We were about to open when it happened so we were trying to tell everyone in the kitchen get out as soon as possible, and all the power went out so we just turned everything off safely and headed to the store. So many broken bottles but luckily everyone was ok. Normally, there would’ve been more people there," she said.
Tizon said the store would be closed for the next few days. Aside from cleared out shelves and broken bottles, she said there seems to be no structural damage.
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source: news.abs-cbn.com
