Two University students from Chile said none of their families or friends were seriously affected by the Feb. 27 Chilean earthquake.Daniela Schoffer, art history junior from southern Santiago, the capital of Chile, said her brother and his wife were safe in the city, despite the 8.8 magnitude tremors. Her parents live in Louisiana.Schoffer said she learned about the earthquake shortly after midnight on Saturday, while chatting on Facebook with a Chilean friend living in California.”I tried to contact my brother after that, but there was no power,” Schoffer said. She was finally able to contact him an hour after the quake, and learned he was safe.Schoffer said a friend of her brother was driving a car at the time of the quake, which stopped running because of the shock waves generated by the earthquake.Gustavo Chacon Rojas, engineering graduate student from Chuquicamata in northern Chile, said his family and friends in Santiago survived the earthquake without much damage.”My friends were saying that at some point, everything was going down to the floor,” Rojas said. “One of them said he couldn’t move.”Rojas said he heard about the earthquake at 3 a.m. Saturday from a friend. He tried to contact his family on Skype but was unsuccessful because of the power and phone line outages in the city.”My dad called me on Saturday around 3:30 p.m. saying everyone was all right,” Rojas said.Rojas’ father lives in his hometown of Chuquicamata, which was safely out of the earthquake’s range. His mother and uncle live near downtown Santiago.Schoffer said Santiago is a modern city, and the buildings have been specially designed to survive earthquakes and small tremors, which are frequent in the area.”We’re pretty used to it,” she said.Both Schoffer and Rojas said they were taught in school about emergency procedures to be followed during earthquakes.”We were told to get away from windows and go under an arch of wood like the door,” Schoffer said. “Even if it falls, it’s not going to be as heavy.”Both said they were concerned about their families after the incident, even though they were safe from the calamity.”I was really more scared than worried,” Rojas said. “There was nothing I could do. I feel bad, but at least I didn’t have any family in the South.”Schoffer said she was shocked when she thought about her family living through the strong quake.”I didn’t know how strong [the earthquake] was,” Schoffer said. “When I found out, I got a little scared.”Neither Rojas nor Schoffer have plans of going immediately back to Chile. 
 
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Contact Sumit Kumar at [email protected]