From 2/27:
Hi all,
Claire and I are okay - thanks for all of the e-mails and support. Electricity has been out but just came back on about an hour ago - cell phones have been unreliable and dropping our efforts to call, but the internet just became available.
You probably know by now the quake was an 8.8 in Concepcion, a city about 6.5 hours south of Santiago. Radio reports are saying that it was everything from a 7.0 to an 8.3 in Santiago.
We woke up in our apartment at 3:40am to lots of shaking. We've become fairly used to small quakes, but this one kept shaking and kept getting worse. Usually they end after about 5 seconds, but this one lasted around a minute, getting stronger the whole time. Things started to fall in our apartment (small bookshelves, wine bottles, etc). The doors to our porch slid open and water was spilling from the pool (right above us) onto our porch and then into our apartment. At first we jumped out of bed and were holding on to the walls of our doorway, but as the shaking continued (and got worse) we grabbed some clothes and considered trying to make our way downstairs (not sure whether to try and get 24 floors down via the stairs or stay in a doorway). In any case, we remained in the apartment and it ended after around a minute. The damage to the apartment was small - most things that fell actually didn't break - mostly just some ripping of wallpaper as cracks formed in the walls.
There were smaller tremors for the rest of the night (one registered as high as a 5.8 on the richter scale). Needless to say, we didn't get much sleep and left the house early this morning to head to school (we had scheduled a bball practice for this morning and couldn't contact any of the girls because the phones were out). There was some damage to the school as well (we're not sure yet how extensive) and all school activities have been suspended until the damage is further assessed.
Right now we're at our friends Ian and Lissa's house closer to school - we have plenty of food and water and the roads and stores for the most part withstood the quake extremely well and things seem like they'll be operating before too long (hopefully!). We now have full electricity and internet (although might be a bit spotty) here at Ian and Lissa's, and we assume things are back on at our apartment as well.
Our love to all, and thanks for the e-mails. We'll call as soon as we get a chance, but it might be a while. We're extremely safe, so don't get worried!
Justin & Claire
From 2/28:
Hi all,
Everything remains good here for Claire and I, although some pretty scary reports of damage are coming in from some of the areas along the coast and closer to the epicenter. We've heard some first-hand accounts from friends that were along the coast for the weekend - the scariest involves some friends who came back down to their car (after fleeing to higher ground to escape a tsunami) to find that it was totaled and moved almost 200m by a wave. Makes us feel very lucky, but also makes us think about the long road ahead for certain sections of the country.
There's been a minimal amount of damage at our school, but enough that school for students has been suspended until at least Tuesday. Teachers will report tomorrow to clean up classrooms and try to get things in order. Lots of tipped over bookshelves, computers that have fallen from desks, ceiling-mounted projectors that are hanging from cables, collapsed ceiling tiles, and for me a whole lot of broken lab equipment. Luckily there are no reported gas or water leaks. I have a feeling some of us will be displaced from certain classrooms until everything is back in order.
We stayed at Ian & Lissa's last night - to be on the safe side we're awaiting 'official' news from our building that everything has been checked and is safe. We went back yesterday afternoon and everything seemed okay. We noticed that most damage to the walls came right around the front door - lots of tears in the wallpaper, and on the outside of the apartment (in the hallway) there is a huge crack around the front door trim.
There have been continuous earthquakes every hour or so since the big one. This morning we actually had a 6.2, which until 2 nights ago would have been the largest Claire and I have ever felt.
Thanks again for all the messages and concern. We'll keep everyone updated!
Love,
J&C
Everything remains good here for Claire and I, although some pretty scary reports of damage are coming in from some of the areas along the coast and closer to the epicenter. We've heard some first-hand accounts from friends that were along the coast for the weekend - the scariest involves some friends who came back down to their car (after fleeing to higher ground to escape a tsunami) to find that it was totaled and moved almost 200m by a wave. Makes us feel very lucky, but also makes us think about the long road ahead for certain sections of the country.
There's been a minimal amount of damage at our school, but enough that school for students has been suspended until at least Tuesday. Teachers will report tomorrow to clean up classrooms and try to get things in order. Lots of tipped over bookshelves, computers that have fallen from desks, ceiling-mounted projectors that are hanging from cables, collapsed ceiling tiles, and for me a whole lot of broken lab equipment. Luckily there are no reported gas or water leaks. I have a feeling some of us will be displaced from certain classrooms until everything is back in order.
We stayed at Ian & Lissa's last night - to be on the safe side we're awaiting 'official' news from our building that everything has been checked and is safe. We went back yesterday afternoon and everything seemed okay. We noticed that most damage to the walls came right around the front door - lots of tears in the wallpaper, and on the outside of the apartment (in the hallway) there is a huge crack around the front door trim.
There have been continuous earthquakes every hour or so since the big one. This morning we actually had a 6.2, which until 2 nights ago would have been the largest Claire and I have ever felt.
Thanks again for all the messages and concern. We'll keep everyone updated!
Love,
J&C
From 3/6:
Hi all,
We thought we'd give another quick update from the last few days - we'll follow it up right away with a handful of pictures as well. On Thursday morning we volunteered with a group called FIMA (www.fima.cl - they normally do coastal pollution clean-ups) to load up our car with supplies that had been donated and drive as part of a 10-car caravan to Curanipe, a city on the coast about 50 miles north of Concepcion that had been slammed with the tsunami that followed last weekend's earthquake. We were pretty impressed to see that one of the local Patagonia stores had donated eight giant trash bags full of brand-new clothing and gear - definitely made future customers out of us. Anyway, the drive to Curanipe would normally take around 5 hours but due to broken overpasses and bridges and damaged stretches of the highway it took closer to 10 hours.
When we got there, the military was directing all supplies to a discoteque (dance club) called El Punto so that they could protect and oversee the distribution process. So from about 9pm until 11pm on Thursday night we unloaded supplies into El Punto - made pretty amusing by the mixture of volunteers, military (with guns), and red and blue lights mixed by a disco ball (the only lights the dance club had).
We knew we might be helping out for a few days and so we camped out back with our tent in the parking lot that night, politely declining the beds they had in a couple of upstairs "bedrooms" at the club (creepy, huh?). Friday morning we woke up and went off with our crew to help put up shelters in a refugee camp. We hadn't seen town until that morning because it had been dark when we arrived the night before, and things looked as bad as we had seen in the pictures - everything even close to the water was completely leveled, and there were about two feet of wood and trash covering the ground everywhere. In contrast, everything that was at least 5 meters or so up the hill was completely fine, and so the roads were safe and easy to navigate.
We arrived at the spot that was supposed to be the camp, but there wasn't anyone there. Either there had been miscommunication or else people had left, so our group headed to the town municipality and they directed us to a hospital near water level that needed clearing. The building's structure was still intact for the most part, but there was about 6 inches of dirt and trash covering everything - we spent about 4 hours clearing it out (even the top shelves of closets were covered in sand and dirt from the tsunami - I can't imagine the amount of water that must have come through) and then headed back to our homebase/silly dance club/El Punto. We got the feeling pretty quickly that the best thing we could do was try to head back to Santiago and hope to make another run with supplies the next day, so we took off.
It took us about 8 hours to get back home, and after some communication with FIMA they decided they didn't have enough manpower for another caravan on Saturday. We had a great dinner at our friend Nicole's apartment and found out about another opportunity to help out in San Antonio and Cartagena (two more coastal towns - about 30 km south of Valparaiso and thus much closer to Santiago) today. So this morning we headed west with a group of friends, and our first stop was a gymnasium-turned-supply center in Cartagena. We unloaded government-prepared supply boxes from a truck, and then half of us split off to go deliver them to houses while the rest of us helped move everything from a damaged jardin infantil (public kindergarten and daycare center) to another, undamaged one about a kilometer further up the hill.
We just got back into Santiago to the news that school will most likely resume on Monday - even though water is still iffy (students are being asked to bring their own water bottles) and electricity might be coming from our diesel generators, it will be nice to get back to a normal routine. Spirits as a whole are very high in Santiago and also in the outlying areas - almost all cars are decorated with so many flags and "viva chile!" paint that it seems like the entire country is headed to some sort of enormous cheerleading competition - and so even though the road to recovery is clearly a long one there is a feeling of solidarity.
We miss everyone and hope that you're all doing well! Hopefully we'll get a chance to talk with everyone soon.
Love,
Justin & Claire
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