News
Sports
Weather
Classifieds
Opinions
Obituaries
Special Reports

Home
About Us
FAQ
Links
Advertising

Carstairs Courier
Didsbury Review
Innisfail Province
Mountain View Gazette
Olds Albertan
Sundre Round Up

Commercial Printing
Great West Newspapers

A massive earthquake, measuring 8.8 on the Richter scale, rocked the country of Chile on Saturday, Feb. 27, and all Bowden area resident Jose Fuentes could do was watch the destruction broadcast over the television and hope his family was nowhere near it.

Jose was raised in Santiago, Chile, the country’s capital, but came to Canada in 1999 as a foreign exchange student.

"My college in Chile had an exchange student program with Olds College," Jose explained. "At the beginning, the plan wasn’t to stay in Canada. The program at Olds College was two years, and I got a job in Edmonton after that."

During that time, Jose met Carmen, an Innisfail woman that became his wife in 2003.

Jose is the only member of his family in Canada, with all of the rest back in Santiago, about 330 kilometres, or a four-hour drive, from the epicentre of the recent earthquake.

"I heard about it on the news early that Saturday morning," he said. "At the beginning, I wasn’t that worried because we get lots of earthquakes in Chile. But as I was watching TV, I realized it wasn’t a simple earthquake – it was a strong one.

"I started thinking about all of my family and how they were doing. I didn’t want them to be in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Although Jose’s family lives over 300 kilometres from the epicentre of the earthquake, Jose said they certainly felt it at their home.

"That far away, the earthquake would feel like an 8.5, but that’s still huge."

Jose’s family is doing well in Chile, and no one was hurt.

"All of my family is OK. They experienced a lot and were really scared for a few days."

Jose explained that the aftershocks of an earthquake come and go for about two or three days after the initial quake.

"They felt 74 aftershocks," Jose said.

"My mom has a crack in her dining room wall that will need to be repaired," Jose continued. "But there was a lot of damage all over Chile."

After hearing the news, Jose said he tried to contact his family, but it was quite a while before the phone lines were working in his home country.

"It was a little long before I got a hold of anyone in my family," he said with a laugh, adding that he did get to talk to his family that evening.

"Because we heard it was farther away and from what I saw on the news, we were pretty sure everyone was OK," said Carmen. "But you never know."

Jose said he also has family in Concepción, a town a lot closer to the epicentre than Santiago.

"We had no communication with them for two days," he said. "We were really worried about them, but everyone is OK. There is a lot of chaos in Concepción."

Jose said the earthquake was a major scare for the country. Life is moving on in Santiago, but he said citizens in Concepción are still struggling and there is a lot of looting going on, similar to what happened in the US after Hurricane Katrina.

"For the whole country, it’s going to take three or four years to rebuild," he estimated. "It’s really bad over there. The foundations of a lot of buildings are now unsafe and all of those people have to be moved out. A lot of people don’t know what they’re going to do now."

Bridges, roads and buildings took the brunt of the damage, Jose said.

But the bad news didn’t end with the earthquake – a tsunami hit Chile soon after, because of the earlier quake, and killed even more people. "A lot of the people who died were the ones living in small villages along the coast," Jose said.

"It makes me feel terrible for my country."

Jose said homes in Chile are built to withstand earthquakes, but it was the tsunami they weren’t prepared for.

"There was a tsunami warning, but the country reacted too late," he said. "Not everyone got the warning in time."

Jose said he has never been in a tsunami before, but you can tell when one is coming because the ocean will back up, like a reverse tide.

"My family has never been in a tsunami before either, and earthquakes only a few times before."

Jose, Carmen and their son, Ben, were just in Chile in December, celebrating Christmas with Jose’s family.

"It feels weird to know we were just there," he said. "But it was beautiful when we were there. We even went down to the ocean a few times. Everything was good."

Jose said he and his family will try and get back to Chile at least every other year and they’re expecting that the country won’t look quite the same when they go back again.

The earthquake has displaced more than 1.5 million people and tied for the fifth largest earthquake in the world since 1900.

Chile President Michelle Bachelet, speaking at a news conference on Saturday night, Feb. 27, called the quake "one of the worst tragedies in the last 50 years" and declared a "state of catastrophe."

While this earthquake was far stronger than the 7.0-magnitude one that ravaged Haiti six weeks ago, the damage and death toll in Chile are likely to be far less extensive, in part because of strict building codes put in place after devastating earthquakes.