February 27, 2010 at 3:24am
I awoke to a sudden jolt that continued. I looked and said to Rodrigo… “What’s going on?” He said, “An earthquake, come on!” And tugged me in his direction to the door of the bedroom which he opened. He grabbed onto the frame, and I held tight onto him. I don’t know for how long the quake went on, we heard anywhere from 3 to 4.5 minutes. It seemed like 10. I remember thinking for sure the upstairs was going to fall off the house and we were going to die. Rodrigo said when he was watching he window it looked like the house was moving at least 1 yard to either side. Who knows? We were moving a lot I remember. I thought many times I was going to fall to the floor, but never did. I started begging it to stop… but it didn’t. We heard a lot of glass breaking downstairs and the wood from the house cracking (but not breaking). When everything settled enough for us to move, Rodrigo said, “Grab some shoes.” We grabbed some and went downstairs.
We were on the 2nd story of a house with a basement built into the hill, made out of wood as stated before. Everyone in the house left. We were in a vacation house on a lake… called “Lago Lanalhue.” We were with Rodrigo’s 1st cousin once removed, Jaime, and his maid Tere. We packed up some things and all got in Jaime’s car. We were still feeling the earth move beneath us. Rodrigo and I both discussed that the quake was the scariest thing we’d ever been through. Jaime, who is a very laid back character with a great sense of humor, said smirking “That was my third.”
We left because even though we were high above the sea, we wanted to get away in case there was a tsunami. As we left the earth was still moving very frequently. We spoke to many horrified people along the way, and with good luck we had an AM radio station from Mendoza, Argentina… 500 miles from where we were. We heard that they felt it too. They were saying the quake was 8.5, later we found out it was 8.8 on the Richter scale. When we made it to the highway, people warned us it had broken in many places (we were on a gravel road before). We were informed there was an accident, everyone was ok… but someone needed to go to the hospital. They were trying to call the hospital but couldn’t because there was no cell phone service, there was no electricity either… so of course there was nothing they could do. I remember when we discovered there wasn’t any cell service, Rodrigo and I were both worried about our parents. We were thinking, how are we ever going to contact them to tell them we’re ok?? Rodrigo and I were thinking maybe sometime that day, or that night there’d be service… we were very wrong!
Initially, when the quake was happening, I was thinking that it only affected our area, but then we found out that Concepcion, Los Angeles, and even Santiago were all really affected too. The lake “Lago Lanalhue” is near a town called Cañete, about 150 kilometers south of Concepcion. I still don’t know exactly where the epicenter was. Rodrigo’s cousin told us that it was near the lake… but I’ve also heard it was in a lot of other places… who knows, all I knew at this time is it really rocked a lot of people, and broke the road.
We went back to the house after we thought it was safe, and parked in a safe place. We continued to be rocked while we were desperate for information on the radio. Later, Jaime’s sister (who was staying in her cabin next door), came back from a higher place with many people she met there. One family of which was on the beach when the quake hit. He told us there were many HUGE waves. Rodrigo and I thought maybe he was exaggerating a bit. We didn’t have any idea at the time that a tsunami had actually hit Chile and wiped out all of the cute little towns we’d previously been in. The man said he grabbed his family, and drove for the hills… which was where he met Jaime’s sister. We were all worried because Tere (Jaime’s maid) had a daughter staying with her grandmother one block from the ocean, but we didn’t think anything was going to be too bad. We were all praying that they ran for the hills too.
When the sun finally came out, we entered the house to find tons of dishes broken… oil, soap and salt spilled, broken sinks, fallen shelves, ect. We got a majority of it cleaned… “Drank our breakfast” as the Chileans say, then headed to the lake. We found that the Kayaks floated away. Rodrigo and Jaime left to find them, I didn’t think they would because it was REALLY foggy that morning. They returned in about 50 minutes with them in hand.
We then left to bring Jaime’s maid to her family so she could find her daughter. The highways were all cracked. There was one bridge where the end was really broken but still passable. We ran into police that told us they were going to Tere’s hometown (where her daughter was) so we left her with them. We hadn’t heard anything from her until today. We found out from Jaime 5 days later that her house is in the ocean… but her daughter and grandmother survived.
After this we went home and tried to sleep… but couldn’t because the replicas were really frequent still. Rodrigo and I decided to head to the lake to lay on the docks to sleep there. As we were laying there, I was thinking… here I am sunbathing… Rodrigo’s going to go jet boating… I’m going to go kayaking… and everyone at home is probably so worried, but there’s nothing we can do!
We went to clean more… then to Cañete, but nothing too much happened externally to the town. We found that they weren’t selling gas to just anyone, only emergency vehicles. We also found that the highway to Concepcion was split in 2 in two different places. We decided to stay at the cabin because there wasn’t anything we could do anyway.
I went to the lake to bathe when we got home, we ate some dinner and tried to sleep. Rodrigo and I decided we weren’t going to sleep upstairs because the replicas were still very strong… so we slept on the main floor in the living room. Jaime asked me in the morning how many times I woke up… I told him 23. He said, “That’s about right.”
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