Chile's 8.8 Earthquake Report

The February 27th earthquake struck at 3:34 AM local time, and although we were nearly 300 miles SSE from the epicenter, we awoke to a severe shaking that seemed to go on forever. It felt as if someone had grabbed the end of your bed and was shaking it as hard as they could, keeping you from being able to sit-up and get out of bed. The quake lasted over 3 minutes, and we knew immediately that it must have been a big one. We had felt earthquakes in Chile before, but none lasting more than 30 seconds. Most of these were nearly over before we realized that they were happening, so our usual response was to say "was that an earthquake?" This earthquake made it hard to tell the children sleeping nearby not to worry because it was "just an earthquake", as we held on to the bed posts for the next three minutes riding out the rollercoaster-style waves.

The house got a good shaking, but only minor damage. A few new cracks appeared in the beams, but everything remained structurally sound. We were lucky that most of the dishes were in the dishwasher - next door, nearly all were broken as they flew from the cupboards. We lost water, power, and cell phone coverage. Water and electricity returned late Saturday, but we didn't get cell phone service again until we returned to Santiago on Tuesday. With no phone or Internet, we couldn't easily get messages out. After about 6 hours of trying, Skye was able to get one short text message out to her boyfriend who called our parents to let them know that we were safe.

The night before the earthquake, we had packed the car with everything but our tooth brushes, so that we could return to Santiago on Saturday. After the earthquake, however, there was almost no gas available in the south due to the lack of electricity to pump it, so we waited in Lago Ranco two extra days huddled around our radio and trying to call Santiago to find our friend's three older children who had stayed behind to work and/or to attend end of the summer parties. Fortunately, they were all ok. Although our friends had a small battery TV, there were no channels operating until Sunday night, when we saw the first harrowing pictures of the damage.

Summer Update

The Naslund family has been spending the year in Chile, while Dick, a geologist, is on sabbatical leave from Binghamton University and Cheryl, a librarian, is on leave from UE High School. We arrived in August with four adolescent children in tow, and rented an apartment on the fifth floor of a new 19-story apartment building just east of downtown Santiago.Our younger girls (Neelam, Kalindi, and Cambria) are in a local Spanish language high school, while our son (Sterling) makes alfajores, a Chilean caramel-filled cookie dipped in chocolate at a sheltered workshop near our apartment.Our older daughter (Skye) arrived at Christmas after graduating from SUNY Geneseo in December.

January and February are the summer months in Chile, so we took advantage of the school vacation to take a camping trip up first to the desert in the north (more on that at a later date), and then to the Lake District in the south where we spent the last week of our vacation with friends in their post and beam summer home on Lago Ranco.