March 1, 2010
Rodrigo jumped out of bed and ran outside. I hurried to follow. Through some lucky star, Rodrigo’s dad called his sister’s cell phone and it went through. Rodrigo finally got to talk to his parents a little bit. I was so glad they knew we made it, so they could call my parents as well. Evidently, they’d been in contact with my parents the whole time… I’m not sure how, but somehow my mom got a hold of them. They said they would contact my parents and tell them they heard from us. I was so happy, but I really wanted to hear my parents voices too.
After we “Drank our breakfast” as they say here, Sebastian, Rodrigo and I headed with my camera to downtown Concepción. We were sure we could find some way to call them. The radio station was offering their Internet use to send messages to family, so we at least knew that.
On the way, we saw unimaginable devastation. Collapsed bridges, fallen walls, broken streets, and when we made it to the building that fell over, there were TONS of military and reporters. Rodrigo asked some cameramen if they knew anyone here from the States. He told us that AP Radio News was there. He told the guy that I just wanted to call the States to tell them I was alive and ok. He said we could use his phone, but he was almost out of battery. So we knew they were using some type of satellite or something we didn’t have access to. Then Rodrigo saw a really tall, pasty white guy with red hair. He started running after him, but the police stopped him from entering where he was. After he got permission, they let him through. When Rodrigo got to him, he discovered he was British working for a company in the States. He explained my situation to the reporter, the reporter grabbed his Blackberry and asked for my parent’s number. I gave it to him, and he dialed… gave me the phone and it rang!
Dad answered with his typical, “Yelllllllllow, oh hi Maureen, how’s it going there!?” HA! That made me laugh! It was something like 4am there. I was sure that Rodrigo’s parents had contacted them in the meantime, but I didn’t ask. Dad handed the phone to mom and I talked to here for a couple of minutes assuring her I was ok. The reporter filmed me as I was talking to her, but I don’t know if it got broadcasted. Mom was very thankful I got to talk to her… I was too. I really missed my family during all this time.
We left to checkout downtown. There were many buildings ruined, power lines down, military everywhere (thank goodness because someone had to be there to create order again), and super long lines at the gas stations.
We bought a paper and discovered that tsunamis hit and completely destroyed towns along the coast of Chile. Many of which I’d been to in my previous travels to Chile. There were boats on top of houses, everything completely wet, only wood left… and that was in the ocean. We heard that they had nothing dry, and were having a hard time finding a place to stay.
That night, the military came to our neighborhood to ensure the curfew. We all cheered when they came. There were some people however really upset by the military. I personally was very excited because it meant we could rest easy. Although, if you know Chile’s history with the military… they are not thought too highly of, therefore some of the people were really upset they were there. We were all told that if we left the house between 9pm and 12pm the next day, they had permission to take us away. They fired their guns in the air to alarm us that it was 9pm… We didn’t take any risks and didn’t hear anything alarming the next day.
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