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Living the Chilean quakeStory Posted: 3/3/2010 By: ajforno Topics •Disaster response 101 My mother was lucky enough not to be at her 17th floor apartment by the time the quake stroke. My brother Víctor was there alone. All windows opened, wind came in, falling objects all over, and structure being stressed to the limit, surely was an unforgettable experience. After the initial quake walls were cracked, every thing was on the floor, furniture were moved 2 mts from original place. I visited him during the evening. Just by seen his face, I realized he was still sick by the experience. These are two twin triangular concrete 21 story towers of about 35 years old next to each other. Víctor was impressed just to see the tower in front of him balancing heavily. Huge pieces of stucco fell in the stair box too, but the building does not show structural damage. One can see that there was relative movement between pillars and beams, but the pillars did not collapsed by compression, as they did on much newer buildings, that will have to be demolished. The apartments on these towers are mostly owned by old people that live most of the year some where else, may of them are foreign people. When I went to visit my brother the elevator was still not working and when I was on the 13th floor I encounter a lady on her 70-ies that was struggling to go up with bags of food on her hands. I was so amazed to see how she got up to that floor that I offered to carry the bags. She started to talk to me in English. She was from England. What a character! She is a poem and novel writer. Lives by her own on one of the four apartments on the 21st floor. She invited me to visit her apartment. I was happy to see that her apartment had no damage, so I thought my mother`s would be OK too, but it was not the case since my mother's apartment is on the 17th, and apparantly is located at a section of the building that flexes much more than the top floor. This lady told me that she was in bed when the quake started. She tried to open her bedroom door but could not do because a furniture blocked it. Then she just saw her balcony door opened and she passed from the bedroom to the living room crawling the one meter wide balcony in the middle of the quake, I could not believe it!! Finally she got below her table to wait for the worst, two other furniture fell over that table. She would have been much safer in her bed anyway, and she was wise enough not escape to the stairs out of the apartment, where big chunks of concrete plaster were falling from the ceilings. I estimate on at least 30 big new apartment buildings will have to be demolished in the country in the next few months, because of the danger of collapsing over neighboring properties, and that will have to be done fast, and efficiently. Building companies are behaving like "cats against the wall", offering to repair the new collapsed buildings to avoid criminal responsibility, but the Chilean law is quite strict protecting the owners of apartments on new buildings that suffer structural damage.
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