Earthquake!

I've always wanted to experience an earthquake, and having been in Chile last Saturday at 3.34am, I can definitely cross that one off my life list. I was in La Serena, 700km from the epicentre, but the shaking was still powerful enough to wake me, despite my extreme sleep-deprived state following a 6-night observing run. I woke up from a dream convinced that someone was tunnelling into the motel, and when I understood it was a quake, I was astrounded by how strong it was. The building was shaking from side to side by what felt like at least a foot at a time. It never occurred to me that La Serena wasn't the epicentre. I tried to get online to check if there had been reports of an earthquake, but the internet was dead again, so I gave up after 2 hours and went back to sleep. It was only the next day, after sleeping for 12 hours, that I finally managed to get online and saw all the concerned emails and chats from friends and family. At that point, I realised that this was a big quake. Magnitude 8.8 at the centre, many hundreds of people dead, not the quake I wanted to experience.

Next day I went down to the beach, despite a little bit of nervousness at all the tsunami warning signs (La Serena is very flat around the beach). Everyone seemed very normal, and I saw no earthquake damage.

It took me two extra days to get home from Chile, and I had to get a sleeper bus rather than a plane to Santiago. I didn't see much damage in Santiago, despite a long taxi ride from the bus station. There was one fallen-down house and a few demolished walls, which may or may not have been due to the quake. At the airport, there were a few bits of "Peligro" tape around, but nothing that actually looked peligroso. The international flights were run out of the domestic departures terminal, while the domestic departures had been relocated to a tent village outside.

Here's hoping Chile recovers quickly.