terremoto

It’s more than anything surreal that all that just happened. I was sleeping when it started—I vaguely remember it being incorporated into my dream. But when I woke up finally the whole room was shaking so hard. I really didn’t know what to do—I guess my logic was to wait for it to pass. That’s always been my experience with the tremors, and I didn’t exactly feel capable of moving. I should have seen what the buildings nearby looked like swerving back and forth. I was worried about the windows in my room, but I felt like my bed was far enough away. And then I heard things shattering in the apartment, and finally I heard Dennise coming to look for me. They said in the news that it hit at 3:34am and lasted for 90 seconds.
And was in some kind of shock I think, but she told me to get some clothes on and so I just started searching for whatever I could. It was actually hard to find clothes with my nerves running. But I did and ended up borrowing more stuff from Dennise and got my wits about me to get my wallet and keys and cell phone and some jacket or something. So I guess we were getting ready to leave, but we decided we’d talk it out for a bit. We watched from Dennise’s window people in the adjacent building walking down stairs with backpacks to leave, so we kept wondering whyyyy and if we really wanted to leave the building. I was scared to leave! People were crazed. Later I found out about looting and broken in cars. We would have walked to her sister’s house and it was over many dark avenues.
Also, Dennise and I were so lucky in her apartment. Several things in the kitchen shattered, a piece of a chandelier fell and broke, this tall cubic furniture/statue piece fell over, and some other glasses in the living room broke. But a lot of people, even in buildings nearby, had walls cracking, windows breaking, mirrors falling, tvs falling, all furniture and tables falling over. Part of the reason is because we’re on the second floor—the people high up got all that swerve.
So with all that, I didn’t really want to leave. It made me nervous, the thought of being outside. Wondering if something would fall. That whole time of trying to figure out what to do was the worst. That was the time that we were practically waiting for another bigger one to come. Or for a tsunami to follow—that was another worry. And the tremors DID keep coming. Just not as big. There was another big one the next morning, but still not as destructive as the one that hit at 3:30. I was scared! In this way I’m not used to being scared. But at around 6 am, what with our luck of having a house in tact, I just wanted to try and sleep. I think this whole concept of staying awake and waiting for something made me nervous, and I was tired enough to just want to sleep. And I did, waking up on and off all morning with the tremors and all that. I was very lucky to be sleeping in a bed, so many people were up all night not sure what to do.
The next day was odd. We were watching the news—saw how bad it all is in the country. It hit about 6 hours south of here near a city called Concepción. Buildings collapsed there, fires broke out. But even in Santiago, the capital that’s about an hour from here, also got rocked even worse than we did! A lot of building collapses. In Valparaíso, up in its hills where the poorer folks live, there was a lot of destruction. The rest of the city had a lot of damage done inside houses, but not so many building collapses. So watching all that, seeing them rank this as one of the biggest earthquakes in history, made me kind of awed or shocked by my luck I guess. It could have been even more terrifying. Some people are really with nothing right now, and a lot of people died. I’m pretty sure the number is over 300 now. We went on a walk and it was sunny and there weren’t a lot of people out, in fact it seemed like most people had just left in general. It was this eerie feeling of a catastrophe having passed. Also, the ocean was oddly calm and low—the tide line was much farther back than usual. And the strong tremors kept coming all day. When we came back from the walk we had a bit of peach liquor to cheer up the quiet walk, and kept watching the news.
Last night I was worried another bigger one would come. In past earthquakes around the world there have been follow up quakes within the course of the next day. Luckily, I’m awake this morning only having felt a strong tremor early this morning. Phew.