. . .
I'm not really sure what time I fell asleep last night (the 26th), but it was probably a little after midnight. I had been hanging out with the 20-year-old son of the family I'm staying with here in Santiago, and we came back fairly early by Chilean standards. He went to sleep while I watched the first half of a comically-Spanish-dubbed Black Hawk Down in the house's dining room. My host family lives in the Chilean equivalent of a row house in Santiago Centro, the central barrio of Chile's capital, which is home to 5 million people, or 1/3 of the country's population. By the city's Metro, the house is only two stops away from the Plaza de Armas, where the Conquistador Pedro de Valdivia founded the city in 1541. Unfortunately, because of the age of the buildings around Santiago's historical center, many were damaged in the earthquake, most notably the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, whose facade has crumbled and cracked in many places and whose front steps are strewn with stone and bricks.
I must have woken up right at the beginning of the earthquake, a little after 3:30 am local time (1:30 am EST), because it simply felt like an enormous truck was passing by on the street outside; I could feel and hear the ceiling, floor, and windows shaking, and it didn't seem like anything too unusual until I realized that it wasn't stopping, but was instead slowly getting stronger. Somewhere I had heard that Chile has a long history of earthquakes, so, maybe a quarter of the way through the 90-second quake, I finally realized what was actually happening. At this point, I wasn't too worried: seismic shifts and tremors are fairly common, and, because the house had been shaking steadily, but not violently for about 30 seconds I figured this was just a small earthquake that was going to die down any second.
Suddenly, the shaking reached the point where the house itself began to rattle, along with anything standing on shelves or hanging on the walls. Somewhere, sometime, I remember being told that if you're in a house during an earthquake, the best thing to do is to stand in a doorway, I guess because they are some of the strongest, most protected points in a building. This flashed into my head, and I was worried enough to get out of bed, snatch a pair of pants, and head to the door of my room. It was while I was stumbling around in the dark, trying to pull on my pants, that everything began to move - not just shake and rattle, but move up and down, side to side - it was like something that you would find in an amusement park, except I wasn't strapped into a safety harness and, since this was only my fourth night in the country and second night with my family in Santiago, I had no idea how sturdy my house was.
I found out later from my host mom and from one of her other sons how violent this part of the quake actually was. She said that, out of her window, she and her husband could see the buildings across the street bending, swaying, and moving up and down. Her son, who is a bartender in another barrio of the city, told us this morning that the street outside of the bar moved like it was water - like waves in an ocean. I honestly didn't see any of this, because as the house was bucking up and down and moving in ways that houses should never move, I was trying to pull on a pair of pants and make it to the bedroom door, where I finally stood in the quake's last few seconds, as it this violent tossing and bucking slowly began to trail off and the house rattled and shook for maybe 15 or 20 seconds until everything was finally still.
(More coming a little later.)
I'm not really sure what time I fell asleep last night (the 26th), but it was probably a little after midnight. I had been hanging out with the 20-year-old son of the family I'm staying with here in Santiago, and we came back fairly early by Chilean standards. He went to sleep while I watched the first half of a comically-Spanish-dubbed Black Hawk Down in the house's dining room. My host family lives in the Chilean equivalent of a row house in Santiago Centro, the central barrio of Chile's capital, which is home to 5 million people, or 1/3 of the country's population. By the city's Metro, the house is only two stops away from the Plaza de Armas, where the Conquistador Pedro de Valdivia founded the city in 1541. Unfortunately, because of the age of the buildings around Santiago's historical center, many were damaged in the earthquake, most notably the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, whose facade has crumbled and cracked in many places and whose front steps are strewn with stone and bricks.
I must have woken up right at the beginning of the earthquake, a little after 3:30 am local time (1:30 am EST), because it simply felt like an enormous truck was passing by on the street outside; I could feel and hear the ceiling, floor, and windows shaking, and it didn't seem like anything too unusual until I realized that it wasn't stopping, but was instead slowly getting stronger. Somewhere I had heard that Chile has a long history of earthquakes, so, maybe a quarter of the way through the 90-second quake, I finally realized what was actually happening. At this point, I wasn't too worried: seismic shifts and tremors are fairly common, and, because the house had been shaking steadily, but not violently for about 30 seconds I figured this was just a small earthquake that was going to die down any second.
Suddenly, the shaking reached the point where the house itself began to rattle, along with anything standing on shelves or hanging on the walls. Somewhere, sometime, I remember being told that if you're in a house during an earthquake, the best thing to do is to stand in a doorway, I guess because they are some of the strongest, most protected points in a building. This flashed into my head, and I was worried enough to get out of bed, snatch a pair of pants, and head to the door of my room. It was while I was stumbling around in the dark, trying to pull on my pants, that everything began to move - not just shake and rattle, but move up and down, side to side - it was like something that you would find in an amusement park, except I wasn't strapped into a safety harness and, since this was only my fourth night in the country and second night with my family in Santiago, I had no idea how sturdy my house was.
I found out later from my host mom and from one of her other sons how violent this part of the quake actually was. She said that, out of her window, she and her husband could see the buildings across the street bending, swaying, and moving up and down. Her son, who is a bartender in another barrio of the city, told us this morning that the street outside of the bar moved like it was water - like waves in an ocean. I honestly didn't see any of this, because as the house was bucking up and down and moving in ways that houses should never move, I was trying to pull on a pair of pants and make it to the bedroom door, where I finally stood in the quake's last few seconds, as it this violent tossing and bucking slowly began to trail off and the house rattled and shook for maybe 15 or 20 seconds until everything was finally still.
(More coming a little later.)
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