weltwärts chile: earthquake

saturday morning, 27.02.

i woke up shortly before 4 am, my bed was shaking and there was a deep, loud rumbling noise. i was fully awake but not rationally thinking as somehow the shaking made perfect sense to me and did not seem dangerous at all. i had this idea that i was in a house that was sliding down a hill and that everything was fine because it was not going to break and would stop soon. i must have been dreaming, and integrated my dream into my waking brain and just sat in my bed, holding on and waiting. i did not realize it was an earthquake! i could not make sense of what was going on. my analysis of the sliding house seemed crazy to me but it was the only logical conclusion i could come up with. i could hear someone screaming hysterically, but it just confused me because i was convinced that everything was normal and perfectly safe.

the shaking got stronger and the noise got louder, although my dream brain told me that my house should have stopped moving by now, that's when i started getting worried. and then i realized it was eli, the oldest girl, screaming outside, and then i got scared. around that point i realized where i was and that it was actually an earthquake and started thinking about what to do and whether i should go stand in the doorway. i looked out the window at the two houses to see how the girls were doing and why eli was screaming, and they were all coming outside. i remember thinking that they were standing way too close to our building and the giant pine tree, and then i realized that maybe i should go outside too, that was better than standing in the doorframe. i banged on steffi's door and went looking for vanessa, the other new volunteer from germany who just got here a week ago. the electricity was out and it was totally dark and i couldn't find her so i figured she was already out and then i went groping around my room to find my shoes. the quake was only a couple minutes long and by the time we got downstairs, it was already over.

no one was hurt and there was no real damage to any of our buildings, a few things fell out of shelves and stuff broke, and part of the garden wall broke, but that was it. eli had been screaming out of panic, there was no tia sleeping in the casa azul and as the eldest i think she felt responsible and freaked out. she was taking the kids out through the window, as the houses are locked at night. because there were no lights, the tia took forever to find the key to the door. a few of the younger kids didn't even wake up!
there were over 10 more weak tremors that night, i don't think anyone slept very much. there were only one or two that were somewhat stronger, but they stopped almost immediately. the girls were very scared. however we have already heard from all of their families and everyone is alright.
we found out the next day that the quake was 7,5 on the richter scale, which really surprised me. i had guessed maybe a 4 or 5, it's a good thing no one told me it was a 7 that night or i would have been a lot more scared. in the epicenter in concepcion, 300 km away, it was 8,8. it hit in almost the center of chile and affected a large part of the country. older buildings and taller buildings in the center of temuco were affected.

steffi and i had been planning to go out dancing friday night with some friends and we are now really relieved that we had decided to postpone it to saturday. i can't imagine the panic in the disco...two girls died.

we have no electricity (=no internet), no water, and the phone lines are usually too busy to get through, so we had no way of contacting germany, my international phone card is not working either. i am sitting in a gas station which has wifi. water trucks come around handing out water. we don't know yet when we will have water and electricity again. we don't have tv, so we hardly get any news other than the paper. according to today's paper, around 300 people died in all of chile, 11 of them in our region.

here are some pictures from the center of temuco and from the water line. more later when we have internet again.