The destruction surrounding our live position in the Chilean coastal town of Constitucion looks like a Hollywood set.
Rescue workers just removed the body of a missing elderly woman from ruins, onlookers weep, home after home has been ripped from its foundation and thrust in the air by the force of the 14-foot tsunami that plowed through this once tranquil town after Saturday’s 8.8 magnitude earthquake.
Tractors and cherry-pickers scoop up debris and drop it onto flatbed trucks. Since early morning, volunteers have joined firemen, piling planks, broken concrete, broken furniture, crushed refrigerators and TVs. They work tirelessly, as if building a barricade to ward off another attack from the sea.
A fireman shook his head as he told us he has seen this scene replicated in villages and cities along hundreds of miles of coast. The cleanup in Constitucion will take years.
But the Pacific Ocean’s waves now roll in rhythmically a few hundred yards away, as they meet the mouth of the Maule River. We just had another aftershock to raise the drama here. There have been so many, about two hundred.The small ones no longer trouble us. Yesterday’s 5.0 and 6.2, however, reminded us of how we are at the whim of nature.
Fear and survival instincts immediately kick in. It is a way of life for people who live in earthquake zones. And though we are not from these shaky parts, it has now become part of our reality, too.