After discovering that our house was a on its last legs, structurally speaking, the last thing we needed was an earthquake. However, Mother Earth-who's a bit of an old crone these days, constantly complaining about global warming and all that-had other ideas...
So, it was at 6.20am that we were woken up by a gentle shaking of the earth. Which slowly became a little less than gentle and then tailed off after about 25 seconds. It was only a 4.0 on the Richcter Scale though so not that strong. The epicentre, 50km up the coast in Papudo was a 5.0. Of course, here in Chile, anything under a 7.0 is not really considered an earthquake, merely a 'tremor'-if you think that the earthquake in Iran a couple of years ago that killed something like 80,000 people was only 5.5 on the scale, you'll get an idea of how used to these things Chileans, in general, are. That 5.5 would just be a 'temblor' here. Anyway, the old girl held up ok (more than can be said for the girlf's uncle who stayed the night and ran around like a headless chicken) but we should probably get on with the structural stuff asap.
Yesterday at 1pm there was a proper earthquake. It occurred in Aisen, in Chilean Patagonia and measured a big, fat 8.0 on the Richcter Scale (**now being reported variously as anything between 6.2 and 7.3, still pretty big but not as big as first reported). It caused a mini-tsunami, roads to split in two and there are 10-20 people missing at the moment....
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