The Earth shook in Chile!

As you all probably know by now, there was a very strong earthquake in Chile, at about 400km South of Santiago at 3h34AM during the night of 27th Feb. 2010.
The magnitude of the Earthquake where it hit was measured at 8.8 on the Richter scale and in Santiago the equivalent strength would be about 7.0
In Chile, which is undoubtedly one of the Earth most active seismic places, we have to go back 50 years to witness such a strength. The 1960 Valdivia quake, one of the strongest in the whole history of recorded seismic activity was measured at 9.5.
7.0 is equivalent to the Dec. 2009 quake of Haiti.

When it hit, I was asleep in my apartment, located on the 12th floor.
SCARY!
This is the word.
It's really hard to describe the sensations and thoughts that went through my mind during the 2 minutes that lasted the quake. That's a very long time and the movement of the building were extremely impressive! Mother Earth is one strong mom!!
Right after the first quake was over I jumped out of my bed, got dressed as fast as I could, grabbed a torch light and my phone and ran down the 12 floors by the emergency staircase.
One thing I forgot to grab was a sweater so it was a bit chilly waiting down there on the street with all my neighbours (a couple of them didn't want to leave their apartments though, so strange!!)

About 1h30 after being down there, listening to the radio and trying to place phone calls without success, I raised my head to see my 3 friends Caroline, Vincent and Benoit! What a relief!!
They came by car to check on me and we all then went to look for or other friends to check on them. Fortunately they were all sound and safe!
The 4 of us went to the house of Vincent (another one) which has the great advantage to be much closer to the ground!!!
The electricity came back pretty quickly but phone service was really hard to get. after about 7 hours we could use Internet and send messages and call our families to let them know we were ok!
We spent the whole day there, very tired from the lack of sleep, stress and the aftershock, plus all the subsequent smaller quakes that we experienced throughout the day, each time running in the garden for safety.

About 14 hours after the first quake I went back to my place for 20 minutes to grab some clothes and check out on the consequences of the quake. You can see some photos here. Nothing much really. Only a couple of lamps and glasses broken and one big scar on the wall in my living room.

After that we headed back to Vincent's house to spend the night.

So we've been very lucky!! Not the case for all of Chile though. Lots of older houses and buildings got seriously hit, including some of my friends' place. Down South the situation is without any doubt much more serious. Even in Santiago, in the older areas the damages are much worse.

After a good night's sleep, today everything seems quiet again.
Let's hope it'll be this way for a very very long time...