EARTHQUAKE.........TERREMOTO !

This morning at 7:31 I heard a loud pop/crack and the bed seemed to jump up.
"What was that?"
Five seconds later, the bed began to shake back and forth, like someone was at the foot pushing hard over and over. The whole seismic event lasted no more than five to 10 seconds. After the initial recognition, I remembered the advice of my new landlords about earthquakes and jumped out of bed to stand in the doorframe of the bathroom and waited for another wave. Fortunately, it was over...no aftershocks.

During afternoon tea yesterday with my new landlords who are retired German profesores, they told me about their experience with the sixth largest earthquake ever to be recorded by a seismograph....8.8 on the scale. Their bibliotecas (bookshelves) emptied their contents along with the dishes, pantries and the refrigerator, the paintings came down, the stackable washer/dryer toppled, the beds crossed the room, the furniture tipped over and they were thrashed back and forth like being in a dinghy in a hurricane. Wow...

Señora Wittelburger placed her hands on the dining table and showed me the difference between the points...
Slight shaking of the table.................3.0
Major shaking of the table................5.0
Things slowly rolling off the bureau....6.5

I would have categorized today's earthquake, as a newcomer, as a 4.0...later the news reported it as 4.8 between Valparaiso and Santiago...with the epicenter just north on the coast.

The Wittelburger's building was designed and built by the architects who designed the most recent tunnelways under Santiago and the surrounding mountains. After the quake, the architects came...not only to inspect the building, but also to see how their design withstood the large seismic event. According to my landlords, the entire four year old structure rode the earthquake well...with only a few cracks in some tiles and sheetrock. The primary emergency stairwell never moved during the quake...it stood solid. THIS is the place they told me to go in case we experience another of this magnitude.

However, the World Trade Center, where I work did not fair as well. It is ten years old, but was designed with expansion joints that would release during intense pressure. There is a foot of expansion joint space that connects the two towers. Those joints popped and the foot wide gap had to be filled afterwards. Now there is a noticeable rubber like substance in the joints on each floor.

This Chilean 2010 earthquake occurred off the coast near Valparaiso, just west of Santiago on February 10, 2010 at 3:34 in the morning. According to official sources, 525 people lost their lives, 25 people went missing and about 9% of the population lost their homes.

The 1960 Valdivia earthquake or Great Chilean Earthquake of Sunday, 22 May 1960 is to date the most powerful earthquake ever recorded on Earth, rating 9.5 on the moment magnitude scale. It occurred in the afternoon and the resulting tsunami affected southern Chile, Hawaii, Japan, the Philippines, eastern New Zealand, southeast Australia, and the Aleutian Islands in Alaska.
The city of Valdiva in southern Chile was most affected. The epicenter caused localised tsunamis that severely battered the Chilean coast, with waves up to 25 metres (82 ft). The main tsunami raced across the Pacific and devastated Hilo, Hawaii. Waves as high as 10.7 metres (35 ft) were recorded 10,000 kilometres (6,200 mi) from the epicenter, and as far away as Japan and the Philippines.