Could be worse; could be California

Alexei Barrionuevo has an article in The New York Times about the aftermath of the Chilean quake:

The sea gave this small fishing village life. But last weekend, stirred by the powerful earthquake that rocked Chile, it savagely turned on Tubul, swallowing houses and boats and sending most of its 3,000 residents scurrying for the hills. The magnitude 8.8 earthquake flattened large areas of nearby Concepción, carving gaping gashes in highways throughout the southern half of the country and splitting a major bridge here in eight places, rendering it impassable, residents said. But it was the series of four or five powerful waves that followed that practically wiped coastal towns like this one off the map. The waves barreled in not only from the ocean, residents said, but also from the Tubul River to the rear, seeming to encircle the town with a torrent of water.
Now Tubul lies in ruins, with dozens of houses in shambles. Even in normal times, the small towns around here receive little government assistance, forming part of Chile’s poor, rural underclass that has made the country one of the most unequal in Latin America.
But that isolation is particularly burdensome now. Residents said they still had not received any aid from local or federal officials, though they were desperate for drinkable water, food, and fuel. The situation was similar in Tirúa, another coastal town that the tsunami devastated, killing five people and destroying one-fifth of the houses of its 2,000 people.
“Because we are poor, struggling towns, we don’t count,” Juan Martínez said on Tuesday afternoon, his eyes red and burning. “All the help is flowing to the bigger cities, where it matters more for the politicians.” Mr. Martínez, 41, hauled three pieces of wood on his back, heading to the hillside behind Tubul, where residents were hastily building makeshift shantytowns with mattresses strewn on the open grass. After the quake struck around 3:30 a.m. on Saturday, Mr. Martínez sent his wife and three children running from the house for the hills. He stayed behind a few more minutes, gathering shoes and coats for the children. “It felt like the earth had split open,” Mr. Martínez said. “But we all knew there could be a tsunami, and that the wave would be much worse for us.”
Humberto Hernández, a boat captain, said that people ran “screaming in all directions” when the earthquake hit, leaving their belongings behind as they rushed for the hills.
“It was like an apocalypse that night, just like that movie 2012,” said Mr. Hernández, 34. About a half-hour later, the waves roared through the town, smashing fishing boats into homes along the beach. The surge of water picked up one blue house and left it about 500 yards away, where it still rests.
Juan Carlos Sombelo, a fisherman, said he never made it out of his house by the beach and was carried by a wave for about a kilometer, but survived by hanging onto rocks and other debris as the waves receded. “I just told myself, Pull yourself up, pull yourself up,” Mr. Sombelo said. “I was as good as dead, but the water had carried me so far inside that I made it.”
On Tuesday, the streets of Tubul seemed as if a bulldozer had run through them, mangling homes and splitting them into hundreds of pieces. Rubble was stacked more than six feet high. Cats and dogs lay dead alongside roads, flies buzzing over them. People staggered deliriously through the streets, their throats parched from the powerful summer heat and their energy levels at a low ebb.
“This was my house,” said Claudia Álvarez, 42, pointing to twisted rubble that looked more like a junk pile. She roamed the town in a ripped dress, begging for help to get to nearby Arauco, another town ravaged by the quake and ensuing tsunami, so she could search for her husband.
In both coastal towns, there was no electricity, telephone service, working cellphone networks, or drinkable water. The towns barely had fuel to operate cars, and the scant food was running out quickly. Still, so many lives had been spared in the violent flood of water that some residents had hope that the sea had not turned against them. “We have to live near the sea for work,” Janet Leal, 43, said. “We have to respect it.”
In Tirúa, a town where about seventy percent of residents are Mapuche Indians, waves washed away about fifty houses, bent iron light poles to the ground, and deposited several cars inside the river that runs along the village. “We had to organize community groups to try to help fellow residents because help is not arriving from the federal government,” said Rodrigo Díaz, the town’s administrator. “We have had to start to prioritize, to take gasoline from cars to give to ambulances, at least.”
In Tubul, patience is running thin. “What are they waiting for?” said Ms. Leal, whose house was flattened by the waves, which sent a fishing boat straight into her daughter’s home. “The sun and the infections are going to make everyone sick, and we don’t have water, doctors, or any help from the outside.”
The waves splintered boats and flooded motors and compressors, rendering Tubul’s fishing industry impotent, for now. Celia Reyes said the town had just received subsidies from the government worth 2.5 million pesos in December for residents to buy new fishing and boating equipment. But without personal savings, many residents will struggle, she said.
Still, a sense of community spirit flowed through Tubul on Tuesday, where fishermen and boat drivers busily removed debris. Just up the road, along the hillsides near the bridge that the quake and waves ravaged, residents were busily hammering together wood structures to make into tents. They placed wood chairs on the grass and strung clotheslines between trees.
One block from the beach, Jenny Monsalves, 33, proudly showed off a yellow plastic carton filled with dozens of freshly caught shellfish. “I am taking them up the hill to share with ten families,” she said. “We have to stay unified. This earthquake, and the hunger people are feeling, is splitting people apart, and that’s not how we are in Tubul.”