Tsunami Alert - we are OK

The short answer: We are all OK, no tsunami effects in Castro.
The long answer: People take this very seriously. No one was on the coast with video cameras and surfboards.

When I got to school everyone was talking about the earthquake in Japan. Classes started 5 minutes late so the school's director could give us all an update. He'd been in contact with the Castro navy base who told him any tsunami would not arrive until 3pm to 7pm. Teachers generally seem to have a comment on everything in a meeting. This time there was very attentive silence.

Later, the tsunami update was that any waves would not come till late night. Ramon in the laundry told Mike that tsunami waves never come up the straight to Castro but on the west coast town of Cucao (beach visit of 12/31) the waves are a serious issue. Nonetheless when Mike and I were out in town after 7pm we noticed that all the fishing boats where anchored in teh middle of the harbor and not tied to the town pier. Police cars were positioned down in the port and by Nercon bay to keep folks away from the low parts of town. I wondered how well the residents of the palafito house on stilts would sleep tonight. Berto told us his babysitter Dora Lisa kept the TV on the live reporting from Easter Island as folks there awaited the arrival of the tsunami.

Now that morning has dawned we don't see any cruise ships on their side in our bay so I think the predictions of non event were correct. The newspaper reports that in the Bay of Corral (Site of the Spanish forts outside Valdivia where we went with Grammie) the tsunami was 2.5 meters. We saw a photo of a row boat stranded on the stairs leading up from the ferry dock. Having recently been in Corral, we can visualize the reports of water up to the street by the port, on the port side play ground and up to the chip storage at the wood chip plant.

Coming from the East Coast of the US where weather is rarely deadly and the ground never moves, all this is fascinating. I can now see why the death tolls in Chile were relatively small last year when they had the second biggest recorded earthquake. There is a lot to be said about calm preparation.