Earthquakes and Ambulance Rides in Bosnia and Herzegovina

The small town of Trebinje in the Serb Republic of Herzegovina in Bosnia and Herzegovina of the former Yugoslavia seems like a place where not much happens. This is a place where people spend their time sipping coffee in the park and going for evening strolls along the river. This has been how we have spent much of our time here, but the past week has been kind of eventful nevertheless. It began with a night quake and ended with an afternoon ambulance ride to the emergency hospital.

As a child I grew up hearing stories of the “big one,” the earthquake that would sink California. I grew up in New Mexico, but often visited family in California during the summer. One night while sleeping on the couch at my uncle’s house, I woke up to the room rattling and was certain that this was it. It turned out just to be his old refrigerator acting up and I went back to sleep a bit disappointed. Years passed without me experiencing a real earthquake.

Finally, while living in Hawaii, I experienced a quake big enough to knock out the power. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize it at the time and just thought it was a strong wind shaking the building. We experienced a smaller earthquake in Albania a few years ago, but again I didn’t realize it was a quake and at the time thought the shaking was a passing bus. While in Dominican Republic we were near the epicenter of a medium sized earthquake. Half-asleep in bed below a rattling ceiling fan, I again didn’t realize it was a quake but thought rather that the fan was doing it.

This time was different. I woke up in the middle of the night to the house shaking and immediately knew it was an earthquake. Everyone else in the house slept through it, even Tola who will wake and complain if I blink my eyes too loudly.

This region of the Balkans is in a seismic zone and earthquakes are fairly common so although a 4.7 quake was kind of exciting for me, it wasn’t really a big deal.

A cold river runs through the center of Trebinje and we often find ourselves hanging out at the river pool where people gather to swim, drink espressos and sunbathe at the city basin where river water is pumped into a huge pool. The kids love the huge pool, but I prefer to go straight into the river where the water is refreshing and very cold.

Angie is the adventurous one in the family. Whether it’s bungee jumping, parasailing, paragliding or jumping off a bridge she wants to do it, so she was more than willing to jump into the river after me.

She came out of the water with blood gushing down her leg. I took one look at the gash below her knee and quickly scooped her up and wrapped it with a towel. She didn’t feel any pain or even realize what happened. I’ve got no idea how that didn’t hurt.

Running barefoot through the grass I stepped on a bee. This exact same thing happened to me in Trebinje the last time we visited and I think I was in more pain carrying NG around than she was.

Before I could get very far carrying her, an ambulance arrived and they loaded us in.

I think if 10-year old me had a gash that size I probably would have fainted. NG, strapped into the ambulance seat, didn’t shed a tear, but rather looked around and said, “this is actually kind of cool.”

“You know you’re going to have to get stitches, right?”

Her eyes went wide.

“Don’t worry,” I said, pointing at her leg. “If that doesn’t hurt, the stitches won’t hurt and on the plus side your new nickname will be Frankenstein.”

She laughed and said, “that’s what I was thinking.”

The emergency room took us right in and within minutes her leg was stitched up and we were on our way.

If we had been in the United States I imagine we would have been waiting much of the day to get treated and then there would be a bill for thousands of dollars (even with insurance). In Trebinje, we were in and out in less than ten minutes and there was no bill.

The only expectation of the doctor is that we return to the hospital every two days to get the wound cleaned and bandage changed. And all of this is a public service.

It’s amazing to consider that I’m still dealing with a ten thousand dollar hospital bill in the wealthy United States for an adverse reaction to the Covid-19 vaccine while Bosnia and Herzegovina will take care of us at no charge. Sometimes the world seems small nowadays, but in this moment Trebinje feels to be a world away.

It’s hard not to enjoy the slow paced life of Trebinje. It’s a place where worries melt away while one spends the morning slowly sipping coffee in the town square, where accidents and ambulance rides are less scary, and where even earthquakes will just rock one to sleep.