Our first tsunami evacuation

It's no secret that Chile is in the "ring of fire".  The country experiences many earthquakes and is full of active volcanoes.  The strongest earthquake ever recorded OF ALL TIME was in southern Chile in 1960 (it was a 9.5!!).  I experienced my first earthquake last year in Santiago, and since living in Chile, I have now lost count (many are very small and hardly noticeable).

However, on September 16th, a very large earthquake (magnitude of 8.4) rocked Chile, northwest of Santiago. I didn't feel it, so I had no idea what was about to happen.  Steve and I had just put the kids to bed and were sitting down to watch an episode of Downton Abbey when he got a very loud, very annoying alarm on his phone.  He said, um there is something about a tsunami warning.  I didn't quite understand at first, since we hadn't heard about the earthquake yet, and I hadn't received a warning on my phone.  But, then within a span of 5 minutes, one of my good friends here texted and said her and her family were on their way to my house, I saw on Facebook many friends in Santiago were posting about the earthquake just happening.  Posts like "OMG DID YOU FEEL THAT?!" "That was such a long one!!" "Is everyone ok?".  Then, I also got a message on my phone, the same alarm that Steve had.  It was basically a text message saying there is a tsunami watch for the ENTIRE coast of Chile.  My city is nestled between a row of large hills and the coast.  We live about 100 meters from the beach, but luckily, we are on a hill, which puts us in the tsunami safe zone. 

Then, we heard it.  It wasn't real until we heard it.  The local VERY loud, VERY annoying tsunami siren.  I'll be honest, I wasn't worried until I heard it.  The siren sounded scary.  After the siren came a voice saying (in Spanish obviously), "This is a tsunami warning.  Please go to the evacuation area."  I had lots of emotions.  First , I was really hoping the kids wouldn't wake up, Second, I was worried/scared, Third, I was excited for the experience, and Fourth, I was curious.  We ended up having two families join us in the house that night, so it felt more like a tsunami party than anything else.  I offered people water, etc, but everyone just kept saying, No No No, let's wait to see if we need to conserve it (jokingly, obviously, but still a hint of "what if"). 

We are right on the line of the tsunami safe zone, so when people evacuate, they literally come to our street, right outside my front gate.  It was bizarre to look out front and see probably 50 cars lining my street and even parking in the desert mountain that is my front yard. 

Here are two pics I took to show what I just described.  It was dark, and tricky to do this, so it might not do it justice.

My favorite part: No one knew when the tsunami warning was over.  There was never any kind of ALL OK siren or notification.  Literally nothing.  Just a police car that drove down the street that everyone said, ok, that's the normal sign that you can go home.  So after about 2 hours, people started clearing out. 

So there it is.  Chile has an excellent earthquake/tsunami preparedness structure in place.  I was very impressed about how timely all the warnings were.  In fact, here is an interesting article if you want to read more about why Chile fared so well in the earthquake that was larger than the one in Nepal earlier this year.

http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/sep/25/how-chile-survive-earthquake-virtually-unscathed?CMP=share_btn_fb