Terrible news has come through in the last couple of days about the earthquake in Chile. The epicentre was just a few miles to the north of Concepcion and has effected the surrounding country for a few hundred miles in all directions - including Santiago - and into the Pacific Ocean where tsunami warnings have gone out to countries as far away as Australia. Of course, Chile is always prone to earthquake problems but this one is the worst in 50 years. So far, it seems that 300 people have been killed - let's hope the number doesn't increase further. I can't say that the area to the north of Concepcion is one I know well but I did stay a few nights in Santiago. In 1976 I spent 3 months in Chile working in a dairy in Loncoche - about 200 miles further south. I went up to Tamuco a couple of times looking for engineering services and parts and this is now in an area that has suffered some severe earthquake damage. I suppose that there will be more huge cracks across the Longtitudinal road that runs the length of this elongated country; cracks which may one day be repaired.
Chile is in many areas a beautiful country. With the Andes all down one side, creating some spectacular scenery comes easily. But everywhere there are the simmering volcanoes that tell us of turbulence and instability in the Earth's crust beneath. The country is so long that the climate changes dramatically from one end to the other and gives it a rich variety of wild life - flora and fauna. I remember the black vultures that gathered near the dairy where I worked and could be counted in dozens sitting on fences waiting to pounce on small animals and fish that appeared in the warm water that ran into the river from the dairy's drains. I liked the people in Chile and their pragmatic approach to life - in the time of my visit they were ruled by the Pinochet dictatorship, which only 3 years earlier had slaughtered President Allende and his family in the presidential palace - with, it seems, CIA backing because the Americans didn't like the idea of a Communist democracy. I met the local police chief in Loncoche, who wanted to know about any strangers on his patch - Europeans in Loncoche were rare - but he seemed unaffected by who was in charge in Santiago from one day to the next.
I expect that the Chileans will get over this earthquake and, as Churchill would have said, "keep buggering on." I wish them well.
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