**** UPDATE: No damage in Hawaii -- evacuation cancelled. Yay. ****
We are not affected by the earthquake -- thanks to all who have expressed concern.
We had been joking with our spanish teacher, Daniela, in Valparaiso about the steady stream of eathquakes that SF and Valparaiso share (and the way radio stations report on a box of cereal falling off some single store shelf as breaking news, etc.) Now that whole conversation feels very eerie as Valparaiso is in shambles.
The biggest tsunami since 1964 is heading to Hawaii at 11am SF time -- they have evacuated my parents´ neighborhood, so we are keeping our fingers crossed that all is safe there. We called my dad at 6am Hawaii time this morning (we are 7 hours ahead) to make sure that they were up and making preparations. Minutes later the disaster warning alarms sounded throughout the state. He was already up working to get the barges owned by the international desalinization company he works for out of the harbors and safely out to sea in time while my mom prepared stuff at the house.
NOTE From my Mom a few minutes ago (1:55pm SF time): ¨Nothing has happened yet - about a half hour after the estimated time. We packed 3 cars with baby books and treasured items, prepped the house and now are in the Methodist Church Parking lot.¨
Here are some photos of what is happening in Valparaiso, the city we spent a week in earlier this month:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/gallery/2010/02/27/GA2010022701652.html?hpid=topnews
-- Blake
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THANKS for putting this up. was worried - though I figured you were still far enough south to be ok. Here's hoping that as many people have escaped harm as possible. XO. - Emily
ReplyDeleteThank god and thanks for the blog post. So this has NO impact on you and your plans whatsoever, or...?
ReplyDeleteEd
Nope. We are traveling up through Argentina right now along Route 40 -- the eastern side of the Andes. Up in Mendoza, the direction we are heading, the earthquake registered as a 5.4 so no crazy damage. There we will be staying on an organic farm for a week -- in our tent, so even a strong aftershock would not be dangerous. After that, farther north into Bolivia, Peru, then Ecuador. Our plan is to spend another few days to a week in Valparaiso again before we ultimately fly out of Santago back home -- that is 3 months from now so they will probably still be dealing with damage then, but they will likely have dealt with the big dangerous stuff -- Chile´s infrastructure seems very good. Also, they had a big one back in the 50s, which caused them to create building codes that took, significant earthquakes into account (though I don´t think that any building code can possibly account fully for an 8.8). So the damage is simultaneously enormous -- especially on older structures -- and yet more contained that in a poorer country like Haiti.
ReplyDelete-- Blake
So glad to read this post!!!
ReplyDelete-Catherine
I'm glad you're ok - trip looks fabulous in spite of quakes and cold!
ReplyDeleteChris