El Terremoto: Pt. 3

It seems that this earthquake was all the more frightening because it came less than two months after the disaster in Haiti, which I'm sure will be placed along with Hurricane Katrina and the 2004 tsunamis as one of the largest natural disasters of the century up to this point - and rightly so, because it's sure to make a historical impact on the modern development of Haiti as an entire nation. I was somewhat surprised at how intact everything seemed in Santiago, both immediately after the quake and when I woke up the next morning; although, Chileans will point out that many parts of their country have learned from a history of devastating earthquakes, including a one in 1960 rated at 9.5, the world's largest quake on record. It seems like English-language news reports have picked up on Chile's general preparedness for this kind of disaster, and it's important to note because, at least in Santiago, it seems important to how Chileans have reacted to this entire situation.

Of course, the first order of business after waking up was to contact family to let them know everything was fine, but after that, everyone in the house simply sat down in the dining room slowly eating breakfast, drinking tea or coffee, and watching the TV. The power in our part of Santiago had been restored sometime in the very early morning, and the phone lines in the region were still doing pretty well, but everyone simply seemed shocked. The news reports that came in that morning were mostly from Santiago and from nearby cities like Valparaíso and Viña del Mar. Parts of these areas had certainly been damaged, but the situation was fairly good considering the magnitude of the quake: coverage centered on a cycle of streets, buildings, and images that were shown over and over again, because at that point nothing was coming out of the areas closer to epicenter of the quake - no phone calls, no photographs, no video footage. All of this slowly trickled onto the news stations as the days went on, and it really wasn't until today, the 28th, the day after the earthquake, that those of us in Santiago could actually see what had happened to the city of Concepción, the country's second-largest city that was about 70 miles from the epicenter of the quake. I can only imagine that's why the number of deaths attributed to the earthquake has more than doubled since last night and is still climbing, and that's why, despite exhaustive media coverage, we had to wait until today for a real picture of the quake's impact.

Around noon, I went out with my host parents to by bread, because unlike Americans, Chileans (at least those in Santiago) tend to keep a sparsely-stocked kitchen, instead stopping at the local grocery store and carnecería, or butcher shop, every day or two to pick up food for the next few meals. My host family had already been out to buy bread, but the closest grocery store was closed, so I went with them to find an open panadería, a basic bakery that mostly just stocks bread, simple packaged food like rice and pasta, and soda. Incredibly, there was almost no damage to the buildings on our block, and even though there were small piles of rubble and plaster - at least one on every block - it seemed like all the damage in the surrounding blocks was only superficial. The house I'm staying in is near the point in Santiago Centro where middle-class apartments and row houses give way to lower-class immigrant communities. The change isn't drastic, and the general aesthetic is the same, at least to someone who's only been in the country a few days, but the buildings in these communities seem older, which means they aren't as structurally sound. Here, the damage thankfully wasn't anything like the pictures from Haiti, which, at least to me, seem to have become the images most associated with this kind of disaster; instead, as we went along, we could see where parts of buildings' facades had simply crumbled off, showing the stacked stone infrastructure - corners of other buildings had cracked or separated, and every couple of blocks a portion of the sidewalk had been marked off with white caution tape surrounding large piles of fallen rubble and drawing the eyes to crumbling facades or to doors with large steel beams leaning against them, a telltale sign that the worst of the damage was inside.

There were plenty of other people out in the streets as we made our way to the panadería, although everyone seemed fairly calm and mostly just curious to see what had happened to the city. The police were also out, and we were passed by two carabineros, or policemen, on horse and two in a car before we reached the panadería, where another carabinero stood just across the street, obviously watching over the long bread line that stretched out onto the sidewalk. Since that morning, the sky over Santiago had been a dark, murky gray from the dust that had risen from the quake combined with the black smoke that gushed from a large, burning building on the outskirts of the city. However, by now the air was beginning to clear, and the dusty smell that surrounded the area where we were was beginning to fade (or I had simply gotten used to it).

We waited somewhere between 30 and 45 minutes at the panadería before we finally came away with enough bread to last us for a few days. The store was constantly making new batches of pancita, which in this case meant something akin to large, flat biscuits. Every 10-15 minutes, someone would emerge from the bakery in the back of store with a wicker basket of this pancita, and then everyone towards the front of the line would stuff as much as they needed into small plastic bags until all of it was gone and the wait began again. In line, we had plenty of time to follow the news over a small TV that had been set up on top of a pastry cabinet and to inspect the store. There was an enormous crack in one of the corners, and towards the back, the ceiling had cracked, damaging a light and leaving a large chunk of plaster bending away from the ceiling; in the refrigerators, like anything you'd see at you're local gas station, the most of the drinks had fallen down and no one had bothered that morning to sort out the piles of bottles on every shelf.

We took a different way back to our house to pick up some meat and rice, and here the damage was worse. There were buildings that simply had ragged holes in them, some with rubble coming out of their doors, and we passed families who had dragged all of their belongings out into the street, whether because of the damage to their house or because of the very real fear of a small crack turning into a collapsed wall or ceiling during one of the more than 60 aftershocks, most of them rated over 5.0, which have continued into today (one of them woke me up this morning and another interrupted my afternoon siesta yesterday). But without a doubt the worst damage I saw was when I went out with my host parents again in the evening to buy candles, just in case the power went out that night with one of the aftershocks. Only about three blocks from our house, I looked up and saw, next to what I thought was a deserted lot, the entire top floor of a hostel; we could see the furniture and the lamps hanging from the ceiling in colorful paper shades - seemingly undamaged except for the fact that the rooms were missing an entire wall. Then, I realized that the building next to it had completely collapsed - that the lot next to the hostel had been a three or four story building and was now just an enormous pile of rubble that had exposed the innards of the two buildings next to it.

Despite the fairly obvious reminders of the quake - the large cracks or holes in buildings, the large piles of rubble, and the people camping out on the sidewalk or in the green-ways between the two sides of the larger streets - life has returned to normal here in the capital fairly quickly, at least in this part of the city. Cars are back on the streets and the people on the street have somewhere to go besides the nearest collapsed building; I went to a large street market, una fería, with my host parents this morning, and even though almost an entire block was cordoned off because of damages just 20 or 30 yards away from the first stretch of stalls, the market was packed with people buying fresh fruits, vegetables, or fish. Many supermarkets and the Chilean equivalent of convenience stores opened today after remaining closed on Saturday, although policemen and guards at the entrances to many stores only let a certain number of shoppers in at a time and served as a reminder that this was the first time that many people were able to buy supplies after the earthquake. There are still certain parts of Santiago without power, and parts of the Metro system, including the entirety of the city's second most important line (Línea 5) are still closed, but they open tomorrow, and, although there are exceptions it seems like most of the city will begin the month of March and the work week with a sense of normalcy.

However, things are much worse further south, especially in Concepción, where victims of the quake began sacking grocery stores this morning because food and potable water simply aren't available. Now that news reports and footage are finally coming out of Concepción and the surrounding region of Bío Bío, it seems like most of the country, and certainly much of Santiago, has turned its attention south. The phone lines out of Concepción are still down, or at least my host father still isn't able to reach his sister in the city, and I only know what everyone else does - the news reports and the footage on TV - so, at least at this point, I don't have anything more to say about the earthquake. If there's more to say or I have the time, I'll continue posting, whether about the earthquake or other interesting parts of life here in Chile, but for now, it's back to life in Santiago.