SANTIAGO, Chile — Though by now both the aftershocks and news coverage have subsided considerably, AU students studying abroad in this city continue to experience the effects of Chile’s devastating earthquake.
The epicenter of the 8.8-magnitude earthquake was about 200 miles southwest of Santiago, but most AU students said they could feel the ground shake. While some students were in bed, several others were leaving a nightclub when the earthquake hit.
The quake began at around 3:30 a.m. on Feb. 27, and by 11:15 a.m. of the same day, Study Abroad Adviser Brita Doyle had sent out an e-mail to all students and parents of students in the Santiago program. Only nine of the 13 students were accounted for at that time, due to power and phone line outages that made communication difficult. At around 1:00 p.m., Doyle sent a follow-up e-mail stating that all students were safe.
The earthquake struck at the end of AU students’ first week in Chile.
Laura Perkins, a junior in the School of International Service currently abroad in Santiago, said she keeps wondering what the country looked like before the earthquake.
“Was that rubble there before the ‘terremoto,’ or had the roof not been there before also?” she asked, using the Spanish word for earthquake. “Clearly, Chile wasn’t a pristine country full of nothing but solid walls before the earthquake, but there’s no way to tell from looking.”
On March 19, AU students took an all-day bus trip through the Maule region of Chile, which was much closer to the epicenter and therefore more affected by the earthquake than Santiago. During the trip, the students spoke with staff members from Fundación para la Superación de la Pobreza, or the Foundation for Overcoming Poverty — a non-profit organization run by one of their professors — to learn how the organization functions and to determine the specific needs of the earthquake survivors.
Students drove through Iloca, a small fishing village completely destroyed by a tsunami that struck about 20 minutes after the earthquake. The residents had all fled to the hills, leaving nothing on the beach but dirty Chilean flags atop heaps of rubble that had once been their homes. One house had been thrown into the street by the wave. All that was left of another was a square of tile floor and a toilet.
Anna Gallos, a junior in SIS and currently abroad in Santiago, said the trip opened her eyes to the extent of the damage outside Santiago.
“It almost made me feel bad for constantly telling my friends and family that everything’s fine here, because it’s clearly not,” she said. “We will be back in the States and be able to look back on the earthquake simply as an experience we had during our semester abroad, while for so many [Chileans] it is the defining moment of their lives.”
During the bus trip, students also stopped at an ocean town called Pellines, where many residents were living in a temporary housing development, simply because they were too afraid to return to their homes near the ocean. AU students and Fundación staff members took some children from these families to the beach to play games and help them overcome their fear of the sea.
Perkins said what struck her most about the whole experience was not the physical destruction, but rather the perseverance of those people who had nothing left.
“What I got out of the trip to the more affected areas: people will be people no matter what happens,” she said. “Houses may be destroyed, but the little girl in the red dress still has dimples [in] her [cheeks], and it’s still incredibly cute.”
The damage in the Las Condes and Providencia areas of Santiago, where most AU students are staying, was minimal compared to the destruction found farther south. However, the earthquake affected AU programming in Santiago nonetheless. The entire city virtually shut down for several days following the earthquake, which meant several AU orientation activities had to be postponed.
Students postponed their scheduled trip to nearby beach town Viña del Mar, and then postponed the rescheduled trip again due to aftershocks and tsunami warnings on the coast. Classes at the Universidad Diego Portales, which several students are taking on top of their AU courses, also started late, and many students are still having trouble finding internships.
Some things have remained the same, however, according to Perkins.
“It wasn’t the physical destruction that stuck with me; it was the innateness of human interaction,” she said. “People still looked at me when I spoke Spanish with my gringo accent.”
You can reach this staff writer at mkendall@theeagleonline.com.
