My daughter, my thirty-two year old baby girl, is working in the Mendoza wine region of Argentina, right over the mountains from Chile. She sent out this email to the family:
"Well, I am sure you all heard about the earthquake... I sure did feel it this morning - it shook me awake, and then kept shaking. Apparently Chile loses an average of 1 cm every year... they might have lost just a bit more this time. I haven´t heard anything exactly, yet but I think, from my limited experience with earthquakes, that over here it was at least 4.5 to 5. The lights were swaying and car alarms were going off. In town, they were evacuating the hospitals. We felt the big after shock, but then the unrelated 6.0 in Northern Argentina, I didn´t feel at all. The major bummer here is that my roommate worked in a town not 50 km from the epicenter last year and he is having a hell of a time getting any information about anyone. Also, just happens to be a major wine region and I can´t imagine what it has done to the wineries. But, no worries here. Everyone is fine." She is in the little town of Mendoza, in the upper right hand corner of the map. It was actually measured at 8.8
map of earthquake and Mendoza
There has been pretty bad destruction of the older parts of some of the towns and some loss of life, but not on the scale of Haiti. There hundred of thousands of the worlds poorest people died in one blow. Here, in a developed economy, things are bad, but not catastrophic to the same degree. They have resources for rebuilding and their President says not to send aid until they ask for specific aid.
The good news is that it is not worse and the better news is that fears for a Tsunami have been down graded. Here is a good link.
Earthquake overview
Thank you to the friends who have inquired about my daughter.
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