This web site is a running commentary of the Earthquake in Chile. My wife lives there in central Santiago. We have been in touch by internet and she sent me the photos posted there. My wife Gricel is OK but scared. There are still aftershocks every dozen minutes or so some very strong. She said when the earthquake struck she thought she was going to die. She was alone so got up and called me via MSN messenger then set out of foot to her mother's house to retrieve her daughter Lulu.
Tuesday March 11 9:30 AM EST
Gricel and Lulu hid under the kitchen table again as the strongest aftershocks yet rocked the city. While the Presidency of Chile passed from Bachelet to Pinera a 7.2 magnitude replica terrified the citizens. Gricel says that with a 3 to 4 point tremor the building shakes and light bulbs flicker. Then she asks one to imagine a 6 point event. A 7 point shake she says can be called an "earthquake". But with an 8 you cannot even walk because the ground is heaving beneath your feet she says. We hope life gets back to normality soon. Monday Lulu goes back to school one week later while Gricel's damaged school does not open until April 5.
Tuesday March 5 8:00 PM EST
Gricel and her neighbors had a meeting because there is a crack in a pilar which holds up the right hand side of the apartment building. Now Don Francisco is hosting a telethon to raise money for the rebuilding effort and the victims. He is the host of Sabado Gigante on Univision and now lives in Miami but returns to his native Chile often where he first started his television show. He is like Johny Carson or Jay Leno but more famous. In the audience is the current president of Chile and the president elect.
Tuesday March 4 4:00 PM EST
This guy has become a hero in Chile for obvious reasons. Fuerza Chile is the rallying cry to rebuild the country.
Tuesday March 3 8:51 PM EST
6.1 aftershock. This is really rattling the nerves of my family
Tuesday March 3 2:00 PM EST
Thieves broken into my mother-in-laws house.
Max is on the radio at http://itunes.apple.com/podcast/id343606106.
Tuesday March 2 6:00 AM EST
My friend Max from Concepcion has finally updated his facebook site. He says his family is fine because they are in the hills but 90% of the coast is destroyed. Downtown Concepcion is on fire and 15 buildings are threatening to fall. He tells his friends around the world to tell the journalists to bring the military and cops to stop the looting.
There is martial law in Concepcion and in Talca because of the looting. Citizens are shown on TVN carrying baseball bats and pistols to protect their stores many of which have already been looted. The police fire tear gas and pursue criminals into the grass across an irrigation canal. The city is without electricity and water still. Women stopped in the street carrying pilfered goods show that they have taken water, food, toilet paper because their kids are without food. But the citizens lament that many of the looters are simple looters.
Monday March 1 4:00 PM EST
Gricel's mother still has no electricity, water, or gas. A 100 year old school down the street from our apartment collapsed during the earthquake. Already the newspapers say 10,000 school children are without places to go so that children will have classes in shifts. Gricel and Lulu have prepaid cell phones but there is no place to recharge them. There is no place to keep food because our refrigerator was broken in the earthquake. I sent Gricel some money via Moneygram but the telecommunication line is down so she could not take it out yet. There is water in the pipes but it is brown. The toilet does work. Our nannie has family in Concepcion but has not been able to talk with them. The firemen came to our building yesterday because gas was escaping and they shut it off. As you can see from this graph the earth is still moving.
Monday March1 6:00 AM EST
I was finally able to call Gricel on her land line using Skype. She said she slept little because of the aftershocks. Tomas her other son is back in Santiago having been with his father in Rancagua during the earthquake. The Chilean newspapers say the president has given local authorities the right to declare martial law. The US papers say Chile has not asked the USA for help but the Chilean papers says Chile did ask for help getting telecommunications working again. I hope that Chile uses this opportunity as they rebuild to more closely integrate the cellular and land line networks which operate as separate entities with one having to dial special codes to access the other and the fee to call a cell phone from the USA ridiculously expensive compared to other countries.
Sunday February 28 5:00 PM EST
School is postponed a week which is not so bad because I still owe tuition. Gricel worries about people being robbed in the street. She says the police and military are there but not enough of them. My wife said the same thing that a writer for El Mercurio newspaper put forth as a topic for debate in the newspaper's pages:
Seeing the news I cannot but be left with a profound sense of shame which characterizes many Chileans---looting the supermarkets and local businesses and spreading a sense of panic.
An Argentine seeing this writes in response "now you are like us". Meanwhile in Concepcion the Lider supermarket faced down by an angry mob and with police and military on hand to restore order flung open its doors and gave away its groceries for free.
Sunday February 28 12:00 PM EST
Gricel is crying and wants to know if I can get her a visa to come to me in the USA. (No I can't at least not overnight. ) She ventured out into what she called the black market to buy food. She has seen injured people in the street and says it is chaos out there. She says she is ashamed of her country for the way people are behaving on the streets. She says with this mornings aftershocks more buildings have fallen. She says some people are trapped in a building 6 blocks from her apartment.
Sunday February 28 9:00 AM EST
Gricel spent the night outside on the street with her daughter Lulu. Now the worry is there is no food and no water. The Lider grocery store is closed and a riot has broken out at the Lider in Concepcion. Here in Santiago Gricel says people are charging 6,000 pesos for 1 kilo of bread ($12 for 2 lbs). She says the police are driving around firing tear gas bombs to disperse crowds. Not sure if this is in her neighborhood or she saw this in Concepcion on television. She is worried now about criminals wandering the neighborhood in particular illegal immigrants from Peru who she says are responsible for most of the crime. I am still unable to call her by skype or telephone.
Metro service on certain lines has resumed.
Saturday February 27 4:00 PM
Gricel has gone out in the neighborhood to take the photos shown here at the top. Aftershocks occur every few minutes and emit a horrible sound she says. The national newspaper El Mercurio's web site is still offline from the USA and only recently has La Tercera come back on line. The University of Chile keeps track of the many web earthquakes that occur every few days in Chile on-line but this too is off line. The web site I use to watch TVN Chile is offline so I am using http://www.ustream.tv/channel/tv-de-chile which has been put up just for the crisis .
I have no news from Max Morales a friend who lives in Concepcion and runs the web site AndesWines.com . May and I had talked by Skype just the day before on Friday. He lives near the epicenter of the quake in this city of 600,000. The strongest earthquake every registered struck this region in 1960. The coastline actually sank one meter.
Saturday February 27 4:30 AM EST
4:30 AM EST my computer in Virginia rang out as my wife Gricel Carolina Fuentes called me via MSN messenger from Santiago. She said that a terrible earthquake had struck. The television fell off the table and broke, books flew from the shelf, the refrigerator broke, and the toilet was thrown from its mount. There is electricity but no gas nor water. Her apartment is well built and it did not suffer the large damage of the other buildings in the neighborhood.
I posted a message to CNN ireport and a CNN reporter wrote to me asking for my wife's phone number. CNN then called my wife and a reporter talked to her. Then later CNN en espanol called to interview her. I am unable to call Gricel by skype, pingo, or a Verizon calling card. Our internet is working in the apartment again but the land line telephone is not.
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