The longest two minutes for a night

Well, today we have to write about the earthquake of February 27th.

To almost all of us, it was our first earthquake, so the impressions are confusing, even now. Maybe the memories are mixed with the fear, anxiety, and a complex amalgam of feelings.

In my case, I was at my father´s appartment on Maipu, it´s a very high building, and we were on the sixteenth floor. Like all the other days on vacation, I was awake, playing pc games until six o´clock more or less. All the place quiet, my father snoring in the next room, and an entire world to discover with my partners on internet. When suddenly one of then said "it´s shaking" and just after that, my building began to shake too. One of the players, from England, become worried for us, but I told him that here is normal, and that I thought that it was a heavy one, because I was on a tall building. But the shake doesn´t stop, and the noise was increasing. I heared my father getting out of the bed, so I went out of my room to talk with him, he said "it´s a long one,isn´t it?" and just when he said that, the noise became very strong, we heared an explosion and the electricity was cut off. The building took an abrupt movement, so extreme that I fell to the floor and my father to his bed. Then the hell was unleashed...

All the forniture began to broke, all the cups, bottles, glass, television, electrodomestics were falling arround me,and I couldn´t rise myself from the floor. Crawling I could reach my room again, and made the only thing posible in that situation: wait.

When the Earthquake was over, we ran to the kitchen and cut of the gas, we unplugged all the electronic artefacts too, my father put his clothes, and we went out of the apartment. Quickly we became noticed that lots of persons in the other apartments were trapped, because the doorlocks were colapsed. So we used a fire extinguisher and lots of kicks to broke the doors and release our neighbours. That was almost all the night.

Like all the people that live in appartments, I honestly feared that the building could collapse, maybe the walls, maybe the floor, maybe all. Thanks to God, nothing happens there, we were lucky. With my father (an Enginner) we calculate the movement of the building about three meters per side, so, in the high, was terrible.

Soon we noticed that was no news of the southern cities, and we became worried, because my brother and sister were in Valdivia, my beloved people too; but luckily nothing happens there. We did´t imagine the magnitude of the disaster until few days after, when we saw the destruction in Concepcion, Talcahuano, Constitucion and all the others towns.

I believe that as a country, we reacted with the best of us, but with the worst too. I really think that the governament has to send the armed forces to take control of the zone inmediately after the earthquake, not only to establish order, but to help to rescue and aid the wounded. At least three garrisons were ready few minutes after the earthquake, but the order arrive long hours after.

But soon, the help arrived from all corners of our country, and all around the world. I think the react could was better, but it wasn´t all bad too.