In de vorige posting legde ik al uit wie Andre Luteijn is en wat hij in Chili doet. Hij is getrouwd met een Amerikaanse en vandaar dat hij gisteren een engeltalige mail naar familie, vrienden en relaties stuurde. Het is een heftig verhaal vanuit Curicó Valley over het verloop van de ramp en de eerste dagen er na en ik zit me op dit moment enorm op te winden dat hulp aan een rampgebied schijnbaar gerelateerd wordt aan het aantal doden bij zo'n ramp.
Doden kun je niet meer helpen, overlevenden wel!
Mensen in een waanzinnig groot gebied hebben helemaal niks meer. Over een lengte van 600 km (!) werden huizen, bruggen en wegen totaal verwoest! Ja ze leven nog wel, maar hoe moeten de overlevenden ook weer een leven opbouwen? De mail en wat foto's die Andre me stuurde plaats ik hieronder. Wanneer gaan we Chili helpen? Of is dat land misschien te Westers en niet zielig genoeg?
Dear All,
First of all Marianne and I would like to thank everybody for all the signs of concern, calls, mails and sms messages. It is wonderful to receive this support in a moment like this. I am sure most of you have seen the pictures on tv and internet, and have heard the stories about the earthquake in Chile, so I will limit myself how my family and our team experienced this disaster.
We were woken up by violent movements on Saturday morning 3:30h. At first I was annoyed that Marianne “strongly suggested” to go downstairs. We have been through little shudders before, and in the 18 years we live in Chile, these earth movements have woken us up, but they are part of life and just a distraction. This time was different however, which I found out when I did finally get out of bed and hardly could keep on my feet to get down the stairs, out of the house. Outside the trees were shaking violently and so was our house.
It is strange that you don´t know what to do when something big like this happens and I must confess that Marianne had a better sense of handling than I did (some will argue she always does). We all got in the car to pick up Philip, who was sleeping over with friends. When we drove through town, we missed the church in the plaza “San Francisco” in the skyline, and sure enough, it had fallen down. In town many houses had fallen down, walls had come down and people were in the streets and the streets were full with cars. Arriving to the house where Philip was staying, we found the gate was on the ground, together with one pillar, so we could walk right in. You see funny things; the swimming pool was half empty, and Philip told us that the waves in the swimming pool caused by the earthquake were gigantic.
We drove back home and I went back to sleep, as I was exhausted. At eight in the morning we started to take inventory of what had happened in our house. Except for several kilos of broken glasses, mirrors and flower vases, open closets, furniture that had made a 180, fallen down lamps and books, the whole place was intact: I could not even find a crack in the walls and not one bottle broke in my wine cellar. The main problem was that there was no electricity or water, something that was going to become increasingly inconvenient as the days passed by.
The only radio that worked was the car radio, and they only had one station that was reporting. It reported the heavy damage in Curicó, but nothing from outside our area. I took the bike and rode it around town, and the damage in the center was incredible. In the news they said 90% of the center of Curicó is destroyed, but that is exaggerated. But all houses and buildings made of adobe (a mix of clay and straw) have damage, and these make up a large percentage of the buildings in the center. What I found incredible was that all recently build houses, including the houses in the very poor neighborhoods, were standing and were hardly structurally affected. Later, talking to friends who live in tall buildings, they told me how they did not have a plate left to eat from, as everything had come down, including whole closets with glasses and dishes.
On Sunday morning we woke up with a big aftershock at 8.30h. This time I was easier to be convinced to look for a safe place (our bedroom is over the car parking, a big empty space, a long way to fall). We opened the office, got the generator going and helped out people who did not have water (including ourselves). I got in line to get fuel for the car and the generator, which took two hours. After that we visited Bram and Paula and to our great delight they had electricity and tv! I could not believe what I saw. Until that very moment I thought this was an event restricted to our area only, but not that it was an earthquake that affected 70% of the population of Chile, could be felt over a distance of almost 2000 km. and destroyed houses, bridges and roads and caused deaths over a length of 600 km. Most of the deaths however were caused by the tsunamis, which hit the coast minutes after the quake and again one hour later and again several hours after that. We heard that none of the local people died in these coastal villages, but that the people who died were mainly tourists who did not realize you must look for higher ground after an earthquake. On Monday I met the cousin of our gardener who escaped with his life, when he was chased by a tsunami as he sped uphill with his truck, with the water getting to the back of his pick-up truck. Two policemen on motorcycles, who were driving right behind him, were swallowed by the sea, not to be seen again. People tell how they saw all these cars with their lights still on, floating in the sea.
Than the looting started. Actually, it started right after the shock, but not on a massive scale. On Sunday, massive stealing and looting was reported in Concepción, and it spread like a contagious disease around Chile. People started looting supermarkets, but then it spread to other businesses, and soon people were stealing tv´s, refrigerators and all kind of appliances or anything they could get their hands on. On Monday evening we heard shots in Curicó and our nanny told us how they had stayed up all night, as whole gangs were making the town unsafe. Some of the people who work at the winery did not come to work, as they had to stay up all night to defend their house and belongings. Finally yesterday they declared a curfew from midnight to 6 AM and brought in the military who took charge of security in our town. The current government had resisted to bring in the military and to declare a curfew, as they did not want to be associated or reminded of the Pinochet dictatorship years. Once the situation got out of hand, they finally got to their senses, and with the military in town we have a relatively secure environment again.
On Tuesday we decided we needed to take some action, as you feel like an observer in a spectacle that you are part of. Marianne and the boys helped a friend who´s house had come down and I made a flight to the disaster area with meal and other food. They told me they also needed other basic necessities, such as soap, diapers, milk powder, other dry food, medicine etc, which I brought on my second run. These areas were very hard to reach by car, but they are only 20 minutes flying from Curicó. Flying along the coast, it was incredible to see the destruction and damage the tsunamis had caused.
After being without water and electricity for almost three days, we finally got these basic services back on Monday evening. It was heaven to take a shower, have flushing toilets and to see water coming out of a faucet instead of hauling it out of the well. Luckily our neighbor gave us a connection to his generator, so we could save the contents of our freezer.
Today at 16:30h we got internet back in our office, and I expect that by tomorrow relative normality will return for us. But for many people this is only the beginning of their suffering, as they have lost all their belongings and their means to make a living. With all the roads, bridges, ports, communications and electricity poles and other infra-structure destroyed, it is going to take a while to rebuild the country. After four days, I am still shaken by the event. Even literally, because as I am writing this letter, we had three solid after-shocks.
What you learn from such an event is that you are very ill prepared to deal with such an extreme situation, and that the only thing that matters is the safety of your loved ones. Cristobal, one of the guys working in our office, was living with his newly-wed wife in a house of adobe, that they had nicely renovated. He and Macarena ran out the house 3 seconds before the whole place caved in. Had he picked up a shoe or his wallet, he would not tell the story today. He is indeed looking for his wallet today, and all of his furniture is destroyed. But it’s a small matter, really. (Foto hiernaast is het huis van Christobal)
Voor geïnteresseerde media heb ik de contactgegevens en het telefoonnummer van André. Dat land moet geholpen worden!
Er zijn meer foto's beschikbaar.
