right place, right time.

I don't know if they've made any mention of last Friday's 7.0 quake in Concepción in the UK.
Let's just say I am pretttttty glad I left town that very morning and was already half an hour away from Santiago on a moving bus when it hit at 5pm.

I spoke to Samuel at about 6.30pm and he said ah yeah everyone's fine, it was nothing. It was only when I saw Danny and Ary again yesterday that they told me about their experience of it which was quite different.

But first, a bit of background:
Concepción was ground zero of last year's February 27th 8.8 earthquake, although I have heard that in reality it was like 11, but if they say it was anymore the government would be liable to pay for practically all the damages. So the official figure is 8.8. It was followed by a tsunami, which was unannounced. The town that I mentioned a few posts ago, Talcahuano, was worst hit, and in fact the officials were reassuring the people that there was no reason to fear a tidal wave, as they were doing, because it wasn't going to happen. A year later they are still repairing the immense damage.

Concepción is still full of damaged buildings that could collapse at any moment.

Here is an example - a new office block that still has it's "offices for sale" sign. Allegedly the damage was all due to the 10th floor which a bank had bought out and removed all the pillars inside, leaving an open floor...

And another new residential block where 8 people died.

I saw both when I went down there - completely untouched since last year.

I had no idea about this but one of the boys' cousins told Ary that in fact from Feb 27th, they were having full on tremors that could have been about 3-5 on the richter scale non-stop until May. Then it calmed down, until there was another quake on Boxing Day, then the aftershocks started small scale again.

The people have been living under the constant and indeterminable threat of another quake. So Friday's 7.0 had quite an effect. Danny and the family (apart from Samuel who was in a moving car at the time, hence his nonchalant reaction) were in a mall in town when it hit, and they say that everyone absolutely lost it. Stampeding out in every direction while things in the shops were falling and crashing all over the place.

Over the weekend they experienced 33 aftershocks. I've just heard that in this week there have been 80 something.

Meanwhile, in Viña, while we were all in Concepción, there was a lightning storm that hit the Reñaca beach and sent everyone there running in terror too.

For a person that doesn't like being terrified I think I was in the right places at the right times this week.