Chile Update

Chile was impacted by a large earthquake on Saturday 27 February – with the epicenter a few hundred kilometres south west of Santiago.

All of the CMS-A missionaries in Chile have been accounted for and are well. They will no doubt recount their individual experiences over time.

We have received an update from Frances Cook regarding her views on what is happening in Chile.

"It is hard to believe that the earthquake was only yesterday. It has been a long 40 hours. Though probably not as long as the over two minutes of the earthquake. It was 8.0 on richter scale in Santiago. I am stunned by and grateful for how little damage there is in my apartment. One tiny book fell from my bookshelf and my untidy office got a lot more untidy!

It was this building's first earthquake and it did very well indeed. How any structure can stand up to two minutes of that is beyond me and I take my hat off to the engineers.

Here close to the ground, it was as though the whole building was being dragged quickly over an extremely bumpy road, with no tyres! We were treated extremely kindly last night with a lack of significant aftershocks and so were able to sleep well. There have been many small ones and the first significant one today was at 8.30 am. They will go on for ages and we can expect a "seismic" year ahead. The quake was at 3.30am here.

After our introductory intensive week in CEP last week, tomorrow was to be first day of classes, but the metro is not fully functional so we have told them to stay home tomorrow and hope to begin on Tuesday morning. All our students are accounted for bar one, Alejandro Merino, by which I mean simply that we have not been able to contact him.

He lives near a chemicals factory that was on fire, so they may have been evacuated. The CEP itself came out unscathed, as we were informed by students who live in the flat next door.

It was discovered that two beach towns were wiped out, presumably very soon after the quake, with the death toll dramatically increasing."

Please pray for the many people affected by the earthquake in Chile, and especially Christian brothers and sisters who have survived the quake around the Concepción and Temuco area.

Continue to pray for the CMS-A missionaries as they take stock of the situation, and cope with the many aftershocks.