Jolted out of a sound sleep at 3:30 a.m., Lisa MacKenzie of Wolfville remembers leaping out of bed, knowing an earthquake had struck Santiago.
The Air Canada flight attendant was lodged on the 12th floor of a hotel in the Chilean capital Feb. 27.
Dressing immediately, MacKenzie felt the building swaying. The quake went on for almost two minutes.
“It felt like an eternity,” she says. Glasses in the room fell and broke, lamps toppled and the grout in the bathroom’s tiles shook out of the cracks.
“I looked out in the hallway. No one was moving, so I weathered it out. Images of Haiti were in my mind. I thought ‘OK, is this it?’”
Then the shaking stopped.
MacKenzie phoned her colleagues elsewhere in the hotel, and one joined her through a spate of aftershocks that hit that night.
In the morning, MacKenzie says, little damage was apparent in the neighbourhood of the hotel, except broken glass.
“There were areas cordoned off and only one restaurant was open.”
The Air Canada crew had been waiting for a replacement plane to head north, as theirs needed repair due to a bird strike while landing. MacKenzie notes customs checks were conducted outdoors: the crew didn’t even enter the terminal leaving Santiago. MacKenzie finally got back to Wolfville March 2.
“I hope I never have to experience an earthquake again,” she says, adding her heart is with the two million left homeless in Chile.
The 8.8-magnitude quake killed at least 300 people and damaged some 500,000 homes. The quake also damaged airports and roads.
