Local couple feared for lives in Chile quake

Lin Ferguson | 9th March 2010

 A Whangaehu couple wondered whether they would survive the powerful 8.8 earthquake that hit Chile.

The quake which hit at 3.30am and lasted about 3 minutes was the most horrific experience anyone could ever have, they said.

Louisa and Bruce Craig were staying on the sixth floor of a Holiday Inn Hotel beside the Santiago International Airport when the massive quake hit on February 27.

Mr Craig said it was nothing like the earthquakes we get here in New Zealand.

"There was no warning you couldn't hear anything, you couldn't feel anything there was suddenly just a huge bang, shaking, rolling, banging. It made a horrendous noise and everything in the room was turned upside down."

The television went over, things flew off the shelves. Everything was just tossed, rocked and thrown around - including them, he said.

"I really wondered whether we were going to survive -if it had gone on any longer I don't think we would have. It was terrible ... a horrible nightmare" Mrs Craig said.

Even now, Chile was still counting the human and physical cost of the one of the biggest earthquakes in recorded history.

While life had almost returned to normal in Santiago, the cities of Concepcion and Constitucion near the epicentre had suffered widespread damage to buildings, roads and bridges.

President Michelle Bachelet had declared a "state of catastrophe"

Even though the death toll was 723 there were many people still reported missing.

The Craigs were in Santiago waiting to fly to Peru the morning the quake struck.

They had been in the Cities of Concepcion and Constitucion just three days earlier.

They left New Zealand on February 4 for a South Amercian holiday with another couple.

The shambles after the quake was indescribable, they said.

"Of course we couldn't fly out because the airport was such a mess."

Mr Craig said even though there didn't seem like there was much damage at all in the centre of Santiago he quickly realised that all the damage was in the poorer sections of town.

"It's always the poor that cop it," he said.

Since 1962 Santiago has had a building code to withstand an earthquake of magnitude 12.2, so those buildings were all fine. It was the older ones that suffered, he said.

The Craigs were eventually able to fly out in what they described as organised chaos on March 4.

But they were eternally grateful to finally land in New Zealand alive and go home to the peace of their farm

"We were very lucky, very, very lucky."

Wanganui woman Zoila Irvine, who is originally from Constiucion in Chile, was relieved to hear that her family of five sisters, brothers-in-law and nieces and nephews were all fine.

Four days after the quake hit she hadn't been able to contact anyone. Over the weekend word finally came through for her that everyone in her family had survived.