EDITOR’S NOTE: Former Queens resident, web developer Oscar Ortega, moved to the coastal tourist town of Viña del Mar, Chile three years ago. Ortega and his family were awakened by the 8.8 earthquake that struck the nation on February 27. He shared his experience with The Queens Courier about the days that followed the memorable event.
We live in Viña del Mar, in Chile’s fifth region of Valparaiso, a little bit over an hour from the capital of Santiago. We were sleeping when everything started to shake. We thought it was just one of the many other earthquakes that we feel throughout the year that are part of living in this country.
My initial reaction was to wait a few seconds but then I noticed how the vibrations increased and when everything started to oscillate, we jumped out of bed. My girlfriend Alejandra grabbed our daughter and we gathered near a wardrobe and the doorframe, right below one of the main beams of the floor. I held them both tight and tried to keep my equilibrium, because at one point the force of the movement moved us from one side to the other.
The power of nature is humbling. We tried to maintain our calm, though we were still a little afraid. But not even our one-year-old daughter Mila cried. In this situation, you have no other choice but to wait and if you don’t feel the walls falling or the infrastructure, you just have to wait for it to pass. There is absolutely nothing you can do at that moment.
The worst part is that we live one block from the beach and that raises the danger to a degree because of a possible tsunami. This is a tourist town and we were at the end of our summer. If there had been a tsunami, the story would have been much different because of the number of tourists.
Fortunately our city of Viña del Mar did not suffer the damages of, for example, Valparaiso, which is filled with old homes. However, here we have relatively newer buildings that are collapsing and people have begun to evacuate them. We had broken water mains that flooded the streets, which left us without water for a few days. The storefront windows of businesses, particularly the car dealerships, broke. But in general we didn’t suffer major damage. It could have been worse considering that the same night of the earthquake was the last night of the Viña del Mar music festival and 15,000 people had gathered at Quinta Vergara Park. Luckily, the crowds had dispersed about half an hour earlier.
After the quake I received a lot of support from my friends and family via email and Facebook. At first it was difficult because we had no light and the phone lines had collapsed. I was able to reach my brother in Spain through a cell phone. I sent a few emails and I communicated by instant messaging with him. After the electricity was restored the afternoon of the earthquake, we had an online video conference, which helped calm my family’s nerves.
There are a lot of lessons to be learned from this. I hope the authorities learn not to wait until something happens to take the appropriate measures. The government has a lot more than the earthquake to worry about because the behavior of some people has embarrassed many Chileans.
I have never seen acts like this anywhere else where there has been a disaster like this. But the reaction has been slow, disorganized by the army and navy. But the worst part is the lack of accepting responsibility for why the tsunami alert did not go off in the area of the affected coastland. Hundreds of lives could have been saved. The class and favoritism structure still exists depending on where you live and your social status.
Also, my family has learned to take its own measures. We plan to have “A Go Bag” filled with basics just in case we have to run out of the house. That’s something basic we’ve learned – people sometimes don’t take these things seriously.
