Last month’s earthquake in China, which has so far claimed nearly 70,000 lives, was felt by local educators who were in a nearby province.

Dr. Jeff Ferguson, an associate professor at Northwest Missouri State University, joined a group of more than 30 faculty and students from Northwest and other U.S. universities in an international symposium in China in early May. Three days after his arrival, the ground shook.

Dr. Ferguson, a faculty member in Northwest’s Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance (HPERD) Department, had just stood to give a presentation on curriculum to a group of Chinese academics when he felt the beginnings of the quake. They were at Hebei Normal University in Shijiazhuang, about two hours south of Beijing and about 1,000 miles from the quake’s epicenter.

“I could feel the vibrations go right up through my body,” said Dr. Ferguson of being on the fifth floor of a 27-story building. “I realized the building and I were moving a little bit from side to side. That’s when I said, ‘Everybody, get out!’”

Dr. Terry Robertson, chair of Northwest’s HPERD department, was down the hall from Dr. Ferguson in another classroom. He’s experienced two earthquakes in California, but on this day, he thought his eyes were playing tricks on him as students in front of him appeared to be moving. He felt queasy, too.

“I felt a little bounce in my chair,” he said. “People started standing up and running to the window to look.”

China’s last major earthquake was in 1976, a quake that took more than 200,000 lives. Dr. Ferguson said many of the young Chinese students weren’t aware of what was happening as they exited the building and took shelter in a park across the street.

As the scope of the devastation in Sichuan Province became more apparent through newscasts that the group watched (there was no destruction in their area), Dr. Ferguson said the American group wished they could have done something to help.

“In just that short a period of time, we’d developed a closeness with the Chinese faculty members and the students we were dealing with,” Dr. Ferguson said, adding that there was absolutely no anti-American sentiment from anybody they encountered. “They were so gracious. You felt for the people, you really did ... you try to express your condolences to them, and you just didn’t feel it was enough.”

Both men are in frequent contact with their academic hosts in China and said they’d welcome the opportunity to return.

Jimmy Myers can be reached

at jimmym@npgco.com.