Could all the dead people please take one step forward?

It's all so surreal. Did it happen? Was it a bad, yet terribly exciting, dream? Oh no! I've just switched on the TV and they're still talking about it. I officially have terremoto fatigue. It's been almost a week since The Quake that Shook Chile as it's being lazily dubbed by bloggers.
 
In Santiago there is very little evidence that such an event occurred. Yesterday morning a student took me on a tour of his 3 storey, city centre, office building. The inside walls visibly bore the scars of the the big shake. Cracks ripped through the plasterwork which he assured me were purely superficial.

Now that we are in March, the city should be back to it's normal congested self. Congested by people as well as traffic. It's not. Fantastic!! The metro has been practically empty every morning. I was able to do my Jumping Jacks no problem at all. So, where are the people? Are they MIA? Have they not been able to get back from their holiday destinations? Have they all left to do some humanitarian work? No, no and hahahaha!


One verb you soon learn here if you haven't already got it in your vocabulary is aprovechar and its pronominal counterpart aprovecharse. Chileans love to, and will try to aprovecharse at every given opportunity. It's true that many areas of the city are without water, gas, electricity or a combination of all three. I, myself, am without gas and therefore hot water and the ability to cook food. The bone-idle natives it seems are using the current situation to have a few more days off work.

The weekend of the quake I watched the various news channels and browsed various websites getting much needed information. On the whole, the journalism was pretty good across the Chilean, American and British networks. I was amazed at how much airtime CNN International was giving the story. Not once in 48 hours did it relent. As the hours ticked by and the fatalities plateaued, the CNN International journalists were visibly disappointed by the unwillingness of that number to climb. The newsreaders read the number through gritted teeth while inwardly saying: Die motherfuckers! Die! I came in on my day off for this? It's not even four figures yet. I bet the number is bigger over on Fox.

Aside from my gas problem (!), Monday morning started off pretty normally. I skipped off to my 8.00am class bidding a cheerful buen día! to the conserje. He grunted back in kind. That morning I brought my camera. I thought it would be a good idea to take a few snaps of the damage. Although the sun was still rising, there was enough light to see everything. Unfortunately (or perhaps, fortunately), I arrived at my destination devoid of evidence. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Sure, there were signs of devastation and destruction but that's Santiago's natural demeanor. I took a different route home but alas to no avail. I do know that a steeple fell off a church in Providencia, and that part of the motorway that encompasses the city collapsed and in the suburb of Maipú some apartment blocks subsided. I think something similar happened in Ñuñoa.

If you watch the post-weekend news on Chilean TV you would think Santiago is a war zone. The international networks have got bored with it now preferring to make fleeting references to the looting and general breakdown of social order. Of course, the real problems are down south but a sceptic like me though, has problems believing what he's being told about Concepción et al if they are so far off the money about Santiago.

TVN is a fairly respectable network here. They have a pretty good news service each morning until about 8.00am. Then the magazine show Buenos Días a Todo takes over. On Tuesday morning they interviewed a fat Chilean housewife crying that she didn't have enough bread or milk while in the background locals are ransacking a Lider supermarket. The show then leads into commercial by showing some slo-mo footage of the devastation (read: crumpled shacks) and people weeping into their hands. And if that didn't do enough to tug the heartstrings, they overdub it with some heartfelt music a la Platoon. The commercials come on. First up, a happy-slappy housewife telling you that Lider (the same supermarket that was being relieved of its stock by looters) has all you need for your kids going back to school. She practically does cartwheels down the aisles telling other housewives on the way of the great offers and at the end everyone leaves the supermarket with big toothy smiles (and official receipts!)

Looting is a major problem down south. It wouldn't have happened to such an extent had the limp, left government given the order sooner to put the army on the street. Without a doubt, had the earthquake happened a fortnight later, Piñera would not have been obstructed by a bunch of headless chickens holding on to power. I'm a great fan of Bachelet but the one black mark against her presidency will be her inability to maintain social order especially around 11th September (the anniversary of the Coup d'Etat that brought Pinochet to power).

I fully understand the reluctance of the incumbent government to put soldiers on the street but I totally disagree with it. A democratically elected leader giving the order is completely different from a dictator sending out the army to execute whomever disagrees with him.

Nobody is more disappointed in Bachelet than me. She has not displayed the leadership qualities that are required in such a situation. She has spoken without confidence in her own words and has been on the verge of tears during radio and TV interviews. Chileans, however, do cry at the drop of a hat.


Had this occurred in my homeland I would fully expect an inquiry into why the government were so slow to act and why the hell the airport was taken out of commission so easily.

Now there are reports that the death toll may not even be close to the 800 currently being reported. It may only be a quarter of that. This should of course be good news but it still begs the question.........how stoopid can one nation be?

A perennial optimist, I can only see the silver lining and let's face it, a devastating earthquake was the best thing that could have happened to the aesthetically challenged Concepción and the only dead people should be the looters