Francesrosey

So here isn’t really an entry, its a mish mash of emails sent and altered slightly. I can’t really bring myself to write out a whole rant about it.

I was with my two cousins in their apartment on the 10th floor when the earthquake hit.

It was 3:45 or so in the morning. We had been at a roof top party a few hours earlier. Thankfully, and very abnormally, we came home around midnight. Usually parties get into full swing around that time. We’d been drinking Vodka. That was also when I had decided to re-work drupal, and break this website. Don’t drink and attempt to alter PHP code kids. It’s bad.

The shaking was long, and quite violent. Every time I tried to stand on my feet I was thrown at the wall. The noise was indescribable. The sound of the earth creaking, the building rocking, and the glass and silverware smashing on the floor.

Paulina yelled at me to get up and out of bed, Cristi told me to grab all my belongings of value, and once the shaking stopped. We descended the 10 floors to the car park to wait and see what would happen.

The pool had shed its water, the whole car park was drenched in a 5 metre radius from the pool enclosure. Everyone was huddled in family groups and my cousins desperately tried to use their cellphones. I sat and looked at the stars for a long time. It didn’t occur to me, that why I could see them was because the city; 7 million people, were without power.

After 2 hours, we were greeted by a Caribinero (Police) Officer who told us it was ok to go to the apartments and collect belongings. It would be a while before engineers could come and check the structural stability of the building.

We went upstairs and watched the sun rise over the Andes.

We tried to clean up the mess in the apartment. After a short, and restless nap, we sat and watched the TV news. We had power, but no running water, or gas.

Since the apartment had no water or gas working afterward, it was proving hard to make anything to eat. So the decision was made to abandoned it. We planned to trek across the city to an uncle’s house, but as we were about to walk out the door, Uncle Manolo rang the doorbell. Manolo’s house which was nearby, had running water. It was also low to the ground, which was a relief in the unsettling time of aftershocks.

There were aftershocks every half hour or so, some big, some very small. It was quite hard to relax. Where we were it seemed that the buildings mostly suffered only surface damage but parts of the city, where the buildings are old have been completely destroyed. We hadn’t really been out to look around as the city (Santiago) was in chaos. My aunt and uncle both work for the government as an engineer and architect, so they were both very busy assessing the damage to buildings and deciding what will be demolished. They live in a city south of Santiago, which was mostly been flattened by the earthquake. We had planned to travel on the Saturday morning to Rancagua, but this event had made it impossible. The road south had been destroyed too.

Tio Nacho and his wife also came to Manolo’s. We sat, listening to a transistor radio, and sleeping when we could. Being able to eat food was a blessing. The problem was the lack of power. The fridge’s food would slowly defrost. So it had to be eaten. Manolo’s skittish cat had taken a liking to me. Its name was translated as “mortal sin”. Those who know me well, know over the years I have had varying degrees of cat allergy. I thought Will’s cat had cured me of it, as I didn’t get any hive like rashes when around her. It seems I’m not cured, just that Will’s cat, and his mums other cats didn’t set it off. Manolo’s cat, did. I was red and itchy and sleepless.
On Sunday morning we were woken early by a massive shake. After we settled down, we went to Nacho’s house for lunch. I fell asleep after eating. I was shattered. I woke late in the evening to watch the news and eat some more. Pauli and Cristi had gone to the apartment and seen the damage again. Deciding we would return to the apartment building in the morning

I didn’t really take pictures of the quake damage till almost a week later. I felt like it was a horrible thing to do, so when I did take pictures I attempted to be discrete.
Old buildings had been badly damaged. Most of the CBD was fine though. I went to visit Mireya much later on, and discovered the beautiful Barrio where she lived was in a mess. It is one of the oldest neighbourhoods in Santiago. A lot of buildings had extensive internal and external damage. It makes me incredibly sad that the most pretty and historic buildings will have to be destroyed.