Author Rosemary Sullivan
When the 8.8 earthquake hit Chile at 3:34 a.m. on Feb. 27, people were rocked from their beds by its slow ferocity. Over the next few weeks, the death toll was discovered to be lower than initially feared - fewer than 500 were confirmed dead.
But the lives of two million Chileans have been devastated. The quake's epicentre was the southern costal city of Conception. Nearby Constitution was hit, as was Talca, and many towns in a 1,000-kilometre range. The Biobio and Maule regions have been put under a state of emergency.
My husband, Juan Opitz, is from Talca, a city of 200,000. On March 14, he travelled there to help. He described Talca as a war zone - in one section of the city, 10 square blocks were flattened. People were living in tents in parks, under plastic sheeting or in the rubble of their houses. The city was under police curfew from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. Aftershocks have continued daily. Last week, one measured 6.3. Juan and his family keep food and water at the door in case they have to run.
The single bridge that connects the southern cities to Santiago, the capital, was severely damaged. The six-lane highway, the train tracks and the fibre-optic communications were destroyed. In the past month, there has been little direct help. Juan visited one building where 30 people were sheltering, with only three stained mattresses for use. Some stores are functioning, so he's been able to buy essentials: foam mattresses, bottled water, soap, food staples and bleach to counter the filth of the rats in the rubble.
Juan also travelled to Constitution, which was hit by a tidal wave 15 minutes after the quake. It's now an empty space strewn with rubble, mud and mountains of garbage: shoes, furniture, clothes. Students camping on an island in the river to celebrate the end of summer were swept away by the tidal wave. Several military hospitals and one Brazilian field hospital have been erected to help those hurt or in need of medication.
By now, some trucks have arrived with international aid, but distribution is chaotic. Drivers have told people they are awaiting instructions. Private volunteers are in evidence, from Brazil, Argentina and other neighbouring countries, and Juan saw two men from Calgary distributing food in Constitution's Plaza de Armas. The Calgarians made spaghetti for 1,000 people. Not enough. People were fighting over the food.
Soldiers have orders to shoot looters - the first shot over their heads, the next to kill. There have also been aftershocks in Constitution. Juan says it feels like being in a boat with the ground rolling underfoot.
Why are we hearing so little about Chile? In the first days after the quake, then-president Michelle Bachelet announced that Chile did not need help. Santiago was not seriously damaged and, with communications to the south completely down, they vastly underestimated the damage. The quake occurred during the transition from the government of Ms. Bachelet to that of the new president, Sebastian Pinera. The bureaucracy is in total chaos.
But why has the international press been so silent? Are we suffering disaster exhaustion? Haiti continues to be in the news, thank goodness. CNN and other television networks stopped their intense coverage weeks ago. But we continue to hear about Haiti because the United Nations, Bill Clinton, the European Union and Canada have all decided to support Haiti. Which is great, but Chile has slipped under the radar.
We pretend the world is small, with our Facebooks and Twitters, but it's only more noisy and, paradoxically, more silent. There is a vacuum of information out there. If you want to know about anything, you must search for the information yourself.
There's a lesson in all this. The way for a country to prepare for a disaster is to get its public relations machine in shape. It will be needed to get the word out. Otherwise, no one may listen.
Rosemary Sullivan is the Toronto author of Villa Air-Bel: World War II, Escape, and a House in Marseille.