Un...sismo?

The Ring of Fire is pretty active these days, seismic activity-wise. There have been several earthquakes in Chile since we arrived, three of which I heard about.

The first terremoto was pretty far north, near Iquique. I didn't know about it until I heard from family in Minnesota the next day. 

The second terremoto was also near Iquique, and I again found out about it from family in the U.S., but in almost real-time. I was doing some FaceTime with Mom, Matt and Amy in Oregon when Brian got an alert on his phone about a tsunami warning for the entire west coast of South America. "Um...Kat? You're under a tsunami warning..." So I went out to gage the reaction of our housemates - they were on their way to the mirador to watch the ocean. So Alicia and I joined them. Why not?


The third one I found out about in real time. We were a having a wine, cheese, and pringles party (complete with "golf sauce" (ketchup and mayo mixed together)), doing a sing-along (we had finished with The Saints Go Marching In and had moved on to Elvis, when I heard a very loud rumble and noticed the walls jiggling like Jello. I thought a large truck had crashed into the house, but then remembered I was in earthquake territory. By the time the windows started rattling and the plaster started falling, I recognized it for what it was. My first sismo.

There are three words for earthquakes here -- I misheard the word for the smallish quake (I heard incendio, but that is the word for the fires), but a sismo is a medium quake, and terremoto is reserved for the really big ones.

We all just sat at the table. When the sismo had stopped (10? 15? 20 seconds?) later, the Chileans got on their phones and turned on the TV. Once it was clear that all was well, we basically went back to the business of drinking and talking. Just another Friday night!

Chileans get government alerts on their phones of earthquake activity. My housemate explained to me that while Michelle Bachelet was in her first term as president, there was a terrible earthquake in Concepcion that was not handled well. (Something about either failing to warn people or not handling the aftermath very well). She lost some major political points, and the other side (and perhaps the people) blamed her for the deaths in the aftermath. It sounded like a similar political situation to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Whatever political damage she suffered it couldn't have been too bad, because she was recently elected to her second term. The inauguration was March 11, and it was toward the end of March/early April that the major earthquakes started happening again. As my housemate says "she has very bad luck."

At any rate, I can now say what I was doing when I experienced my first sismo. Singing Don't Be Cruel to the ukulele.

How awesome would it be if we were singing All Shook Up?