Stories: Unintended Witness: Earthquake
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| 5 de octubre, 1973, La Calera de Chile
Chilean beds of that era were not known for their comfort. Comprised of a series of long interconnecting springs, that were strong horizontally, they notoriously sagged. They basically looked like a series of small Slinky’s that were interconnected. A thin mattress was placed on top of the spring platform to add some minimal level of comfort. Added to the nocturnal annoyance was a design that was tailored to the average sized Chilean, which meant that my feet would never see the inside of the mattress when I was fully extended.
I am constantly amazed at how we as humans can adapt to the exigencies of our environs. I remember actually sleeping well during that period. Elder Hurst was back and had recovered well. A certain level of comfort was beginning to return as we began to form a routine, in spite of the craziness around us.
Sleep came peacefully that night. I succumbed willingly to restful repose. Then I remember dreaming of dogs barking. It seemed so real. In fact it sounded like every dog in town was barking frantically as if they were sounding an alarm. As soon as I became attuned to the chorus of canine sirens, I could hear the very low rumble of what sounded sort of like a train when heard from the distance. Within moments, my dream became my stark reality. The springs in my bed began to thrust me up and down. Then I heard Elder Hurst shout the warning, “Earthquake.” “Elder, let’s get out of here.
My senses came to full alert. I bounced, almost literally, out of bed and sprang to my feet. My first instinct was to rush out of the bedroom down the short hall and out the front door, but fortunately Elder Hurst led me in the opposite direction for the small inner patio. Lito, his wife and his mother-in-law quickly followed suit. In the pre-dawn darkness the earth seemed to heave the old home up and down. We stood in the middle of the small inner patio, Elder Hurst and I in hyper-alert mode, the two ladies crying and Lito trying to comfort them. I turned around toward the front of the house. It seemed that the sky was ablaze with brilliant fireworks in rapid fire as the bare copper high voltage wires hanging from the cement power poles in front of the house were swaying vertically from the force of the quake.
Generally speaking I resented the Toque de Queda, but on this predawn morning, it saved many lives. Had we rushed into the streets, electrocution was a real possibility. But for those few moments we simply stood there watching the lights as the earth around us shook and groaned. Then just as quickly as it started the earth returned to its slumber. We soon felt confident that we could return to our slumber also. So we groped our way through the darkness back to bed to catch a little sleep before the early morning rays would signal yet another day. We could assess the damage in the morning and pick up that which had fallen because of the earth’s shutter in time.
The earthquake that we had experienced measured 6.7 on the Richter scale. Its epicenter was less than fifty miles off the shore of Valparaiso or roughly a hundred miles from my position. There are two basic ways quakes can move; side-to-side and up and down. We were fortunate that ours was the up and down type. There was remarkably little damage given the strength of the quake.
After morning light, we helped the family clean up the items that had fallen from the quake. When we left the house that morning, we were relieved that the entire wall of houses was standing. As we went about our business, we saw remarkably little damage throughout the town. We felt relieved that there was no loss of life or extreme damage. |
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