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Published: February 28th 2010
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Ok, that was different. Carly and I decided to go south on Friday to stay at some fancy cabanas in the country and take a cooking class from the head chef at Concho y Toro. Generally, this would not be a bad thing, but then generally, there are not 8.8 earthquakes in the neighborhood. Anyway, after a delightful dinner of chicken breast in a litchi sauce with jasmine rice and a couple bottles of wine, we retired to our porch to have a nightcap and watch the fullish moon rising over the mountains. Sometime around 3:35 in the morning, 150km southwest of us, two tectonic plates had an unpleasant encounter. I am not sure if it lasted one minute or forty, but there were three distinct stages (crescendo, apex, and diminuendo) of definite duration. Being wholly unfamiliar with earthquakes and how to respond correctly, we did exactly what you are not supposed to do; namely, we laid in bed and watched the ceiling pulsate and revolve, while speculating entirely too calmly about whether it would fall. At some point during the crescendo movement, I mentioned that we should probably go outside, but carly thought the earth would very soon be ripped
asunder and anyone outside would be swallowed. For the record, I think this is clear evidence that a Hollywood fueled imagination does not help you survive natural disasters. Shortly after the apex, carly shorted out and fainted. I did not respond this time by bruising ribs with a misguided attempt to do CPR. Actually, it was a rather pleasant distraction since the entire earth was still behaving in a manner quite unfathomable for my Midwest American conditioned brain. After the terremoto proper finished and carly had rejoined the ranks of the conscious, our very panicked host arrived wild eyed and blubbering about 4 foot swells in the swimming pool. He was rather incredulous when I said that that had been ‘interesting’. This led me to believe that any reasonably intelligent person was supposed to find such an event much more terrifying than interesting. This was confirmed when we later learned that the terremoto was the seventh strongest in recorded history. My calm response had nothing to do with bravery or fortitude of character, but rather undoubtedly proves that there are certain advantages to being too stupid to recognize mortal threat. The main event of the evening was followed every 10
minutes or so by aftershocks, some pulsing and others of the vibrating variety. (Latest count is that there have been 90 aftershocks with the ones immediately following the quake over 6.0). I think carly, being brighter than me, was awake and duly concerned. I decided that if the roof didn´t fall the first time, I would be happier asleep. She faints; I sleep, we all have our defense mechanisms.
The next morning, we surveyed the damage in the main house. It was trashed. Huge vertical and horizontal cracks in the walls. Almost everything that could fall over, had. This produced a lot of glass breaking. The terracotta roofed quincho, a kind of outside covered pavilion had pan-caked. A wall in the parking area and a part of the neighbor´s house had collapsed. It was clear that a) this lady probably had more important things to do than show a couple of gringos around the kitchen and b) we should go back to Santiago as soon as possible to check on Bobo, the cat, and the general state of our apartment. One factor regarding the timing of the terremoto is that this weekend is the official end of summer, which
means that tens of thousands were expected to be on the highways returning to Santiago. Down south, both cell phones and land lines were dead, so the radio was the only source of information. A bridge spanning a river 20km south had collapsed, but there were no bridges down between us and Santiago. There were, however, overpasses that had huge obviously structural damaging cracks and one that had collapsed. The drive home was hot, slow, involved many prolonged stops, detours, and in addition to the aforementioned overpasses, some spectacularly Hollywood looking cracked up sections of highway.
We arrived home five and a half hours later. Bobo was spooked, but considering the size of the terremoto, the ugly communist era cement block looking apartment building had ridden out the earthquake with seeming ease. Less than 48 hours later, Santiago has returned to something very close to normal: the metro is open, buses run, people are spending Sunday afternoon in the park. Further south though, there is the more sobering reality that the number of dead is continuing to rise.
If you want a real 'on the ground' journalist description, here is my buddy Ben talking to msnbctv:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/35632276#35632276
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ed juda
non-member comment
Thank God!
I'm glad to read (O.K. Look at the pictures, I only went to Ripon) your blog and know y'all are O.K. Tell me something... Is Addis Abbaba on a fault line?