Iquique day 2

After a ridiculously annoying morning of forgetting things and attempting to rent a bike, I went around the south and centre of Iquique searching for crazily damaged buildings from 10-16:30ish (would have stayed out till 6/7 but my bloody cameras ran out of battery and so did my gps!  Absolute nightmare.  First world problems.

I walked around the beach front and observed the damage in the apartment buildings and relatively modern looking buildings as that is my main focus.  I then made my way to central Iquique where after taking a lot of photos of damaged buildings a really nice Chilean guy offered to show me a badly hit area in a central residential area.  I got in the car with him; his wife, his daughter, and his nephew haha.  Such a weird situation but it just shows how friendly and trusting Chileans are, when I said "Britanico" they went mental, haha Brits must be popular, there are a lot of British-Hispanic schools around here after all and they must follow English football because when I said I'm from near Manchester I was quizzed on Alex Ferguson and whether I support Manchester city or Manchester United, they seemed disapointed when I told them I prefer Rugby.

This next part of my day was quite sad and depressing.  The Chilean family dropped me off 1km down the main road at a housing estate that had been badly hit by the 1st of April earthquake and aftershocks.  It had been hit so badly that the people living there have had to camp in their carpark and have been told by the police and local government that they can't live in their homes anymore untill theyre fixed or completely reconstructed.

I was welcomed by Carlos a middle ages Chilean resident of the estate who lives there with his family. He generously volunteered to show me around, he spoke English quite well so I got a lot of information about the severity of the effects of the earthquake, especially for this small but tight-nit community.

Carlos told me "Sometimes I just want to cry all day," - "We have government help, but it isn't enough, we need much more help,". The regional government has provided them with over a hundred water bottles, and the national government has provided over 100 emergency food/supply bags.  Frankly I was quite shocked that in a country as developed as Chile (for South America) that the government hadn't acted faster and helped more.  Carlos has a second home, however he emphasised that it is very small compared to his damaged flat, others are even less fortunate and have to camp in the car park in dangerous conditions right next to potentially collapsable buildings and without running water.

Carlos asked me if I was a journalist and I said "well sort of," this data and pictures will be published on the USGS website and will go towards a published data report as well as an article for a magazine.  Carlos wasn't fussed about whether I was a journalist or not as long as I spread their story the best I could.

After leaving the estate I carried on wandering around central Iquique before my power ran out on both my cameras and GPS!  I then got a taxi back to the hostel, and here I am.

It has been a very strange day today.  The entire experience has made me realise how fortunate I am to live in such a stable and peaceful country with practically no natural hazards, besides flooding and tornados (in extreme cases) in isolated areas.  If anything this experience hasn't put me down or made me scared, it has made me more eager to study Natural Hazards and to specialise in Natural hazard prediction, and management, so that I can be able to help people like Carlos and get them out of the horrible situations that they find themselves in after a major natural disaster has struck.