"Firemen, police and people running in the streets"

Leeds student's Andrew Rogers reports direct from the scene of the 8.8 magnitude earthquake in Chile

By Andrew Rogers

The massive 8.8 magnitude earthquake that struck Chile in the early hours of Saturday morning has so far claimed the lives of 800 people, displaced over 2,000,000 and resulted in virtual Martial Law being imposed in concepcion, Chile’s second largest city. Tremors were felt up and down the East coast including in Valparaiso, where Leeds Student’s Andrew Rogers was staying with friends for the weekend. Here he tells of the night the earth moved.

I woke up at 4am with the floor shaking and didn’t know what was going on. My girlfriend shouted ‘earthquake’, and opened the door.         The quake started quite softly and then increased in intensity so she says again “it’s an earthquake, we need to get out of the building,” as all I have managed thus far in my half asleep state is to sit there like an idiot saying “are you joking” repeatedly.    
    I was staying on the third floor of a hostel in an old house made of adobe brick, a material made of a of mix of sand, clay, horse manure and water, and wood. These houses are particularly susceptible to earthquakes, research has lead one leading academic to say that “the people on the street are killed by the walls that fall out, the people inside are killed by the roof that falls in. It’s terrible.”
    As we made for the door bits of ceiling plaster and planks of wood and other odds and ends began to fall. We hit the last flight of stairs at full speed with another five or six people dressed only in boxer shorts, as more planks of wood started falling and the stairwell was shaking so violently that I thought the whole building was going to collapse.
    As we got outside, the earthquake continued and bits and pieces were falling in the street from various buildings, but everyone in our hostel got out unscathed, and we were just settling down when it hit us that since we were by the coast, and didn’t know where the epicentre of the earthquake was, there was the danger of a tsunami.
    We set off walking up one of the many hills in the city (unfortunately I had only had time to grab my jeans, but no shoes or shirt in the rush), and were not going long before two men passing in a car offered to give us a lift to higher ground.
    By now many people were panicking a little, and there were a lot of firemen, police and people running in the streets.
    Although we don’t have quakes in the UK, I don’t think I was as worried as many Chileans as I was blissfully ignorant of the gravity of the situation.
    Further up the hill, all seemed very calm and the city was in pitch darkness as the lights were cut. We waited there for about an hour or so until a policeman came past and told us it was safe to go back down and that there wasn’t danger of a tsunami.
    When we arrived back at the hostel it wasn’t safe to go back inside to sleep, but we were allowed in to get some clothes and blankets and then spent the remainder of the night on the street opposite the hostel.
    On re-entering the building in the dark, the floor was a total mess, and there were wires on the floor; all sorts of wood, wire and ceiling plaster had fallen in the corridors.
    In the rest of Valparaíso, many people were unable, or too scared, to re-enter their houses for fear of aftershocks (there have been smallish aftershocks reoccurring in the last couple of days).
    Fortunately, Chile’s emergency services are well equipped to deal with an earthquake, and the next day many buses were leaving to Santiago as the road was free from structural damage and cleared of debris, although Valparaíso was still without electricity when we left.
    In the light of day, there was visible damage to many buildings, and lots of rubble and broken glass in the streets, most notably in the street parallel to our Hostel, where there were several very badly damaged buildings, and I think a fatality.
    As we were waiting for a bus to Santiago, I saw two German backpackers and asked to borrow their phone to get a message home that I was ok (my telephone, like most in Chile, isn’t enabled to make or receive international calls). Later that afternoon, I found an open internet cafe in Santiago.
    Back in the capital the damage was less severe than Valparaíso, save a couple of large apartment buildings that collapsed, and life is returning to normality here quicker than elsewhere in the country.
    In some southern cities that were more badly damaged, the story is very different, with tsunami damage on top of the earthquake, many people are looting the supermarkets, most taking just what they need, but some stealing luxury items, including plasma TVs, fridges and washing machines.
    There are a handful of cities still without light or water, and many people cannot go back to their homes, as they have been destroyed or badly damaged.
    We’ve been lucky and the area in Santiago in which I live has electricity and water, so the aftermath of the quake has been frustrating more than anything and there is little to do but wait at home and watch the news which is being broadcast 24/7 on every channel about the horrible things that are happening in other parts of the country.
    The experience definitely hasn’t spoiled my year abroad and the university got in touch recently to make sure that we were all ok, there are currently four other students studying and all are safe. They said they would pass the news on to relevant people at Leeds which is reassuring.
    Classes were due to start here on Monday but are now suspended an extra week, so it seems that we will have a slow week getting back to normal, but nothing more serious.