lunes, 12 de abril de 2010

Relato sobre Llico.terremoto.Sr Cisternas

Three quakes later, man still standing
'Life has a mind of her own'
Monique Plessas, National Post Published: Saturday, April 10, 2010

If surviving three earthquakes makes you some type of expert, then Jose "Pepe" Cisternas has acquired the designation.

He was just 14 in 1939, when his house in Coronel, Chile, came tumbling down in a matter of seconds and he pulled his adoptive mother out of the ruins.
Twenty-one years later, a 9.5-magnitude earthquake rocked Chile and triggered a tsunami. At the time, the accountant, aged 34, with a wife and two children, was living in Valdivia, and just 160 kilo-metres from the epicentre of the quake. His house survived.

Mr. Cisternas eventually returned to the town where he was born -- the small fishing village of Llico -- because it is where he wanted to die.

Then on Feb. 27, Chile was hit by an 8.8-magnitude earthquake. A tsunami swept over Llico and destroyed all but one of the houses on his street. His was the only one left standing on Avenida Central.
"I've lived through three earthquakes now," the 84-year-old man beams proudly. "I know the key is to stay calm and open your eyes and that's what I've done every time."

This week the Chilean government announced that 486 people died in the February quake and tsunami and that $30-billion worth of damage was caused.
On Monday, the government is beginning a "United Chile Rebuilds Better" program for people to apply for subsidies to rebuild their homes. Official numbers say 370,000 homes were damaged.

Small villages such as Llico were particularly hard hit. There are less than 1,000 people in Llico and more than 800 of them are now homeless and living in makeshift tents. Seventeen campsites have sprouted around town.

Mr. Cisternas was born in Llico in 1926 but was sent away to live with his aunt when he was three months old. He finally returned "home" 15 years ago. "I've travelled and worked all over this country, from north to south, but I knew I had to come back because this is where I wanted to rest my bones," he said.

The tsunami that hit on Feb. 27 might have claimed his life if a neighbour hadn't begged him to take him to the hills.

"The shaking [after the earthquake] finally stopped and I sat down to take a moment and recompose my thoughts, when a loud knock made me jump off my chair," he said. "My neighbour came to ask me to take him to the hills with my truck and kept telling me the sea was coming. He was so agitated and scared, I didn't want to have his death on my conscience and at his insistence, drove him up to the hills and stayed there with him."

During his second quake, Mr. Cisternas also lived through a tsunami, but he recalls the sea being more tempered back then. In February, it was terrifying. "This time was different: The sea was violent and unforgiving," he said.

"I don't know why my house is still standing, I only know it shouldn't be," he said, looking outside his bedroom window at the second floor of another house that sits on what used to be his driveway.

He gives a tour of his house, but not before making himself "presentable," taking off his hat and running a small black comb kept in his back pocket through his white hair. His shirt is neatly pressed and he still carries a pen clipped to his shirt pocket, still looking much like an accountant.

The house has been turned upside down. When he gets to his bedroom, he bends down to pick up a painting. Wiping the dried seaweed and sand off with his hands, he sits down on top of the debris on his bed and stares at the canvas.

"My wife, Ximena, paints these, I've been trying to find all of them and clean them before she comes home."
She was away visiting family in a nearby town when the earthquake hit.

Mr. Cisternas says his anxiety spikes around seven o'clock every night and it gets worse after curfew as the silence slowly takes over the town. "I sleep alone in this big house, my windows have all been shattered and the silence is deafening. I start imagining horrific things and try desperately to find something to distract me until I can finally fall asleep."

He knows he's had people come into his house when he wasn't there. One morning his daughter brought him a steamed chicken for dinner, while he was out getting water. It was stolen from his dining room table along with a handgun. "I would never kill anyone, but I needed to know it [the handgun] was there. It was the only thing that allowed me to close my eyes and fall asleep at night."

He knows he has to leave Llico, his dream of retiring in the fishing village no longer possible. He plans on giving his house to a family who have lost everything. Then he'll move away to the city.

"You can plan all you want, but life has a mind of her own," he says. "I will be long gone from this world when Llico is finally Llico again."

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