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It is 8:00 pm, March 6, 2010 and it has been seven days, seventeen hours and six minutes since a massive earthquake struck southern Chile. For many, the moment of the earthquake was outside of time.  The days and hours that have slipped by since the disaster have also been timeless, defined by tragedy, cooperation, and hope for the future. Nobody doubts that on February 27, 2010, Chile experienced the greatest natural disaster of its history.

“At first, it didn’t look like something major,” says Alicia Arellano, a 79-year-old woman from Quillota, a town in central Chile. As in many Chilean rural towns, its buildings are low-rise, designed to resist the small but frequent tremors that affect the country. On the night of the earthquake, the famous Song Festival of Viña del Mar was at its height; locals and tourists in the beach city were enjoying a series of musical performances.

Arellano was sleeping when she was rudely awakened; it didn’t take long for her to realize the intensity of this earthquake. “But after 40 seconds, I thought this was going to be my end.”

The earthquake lasted 90 seconds, much longer than massive earthquakes tend to last. “It was everlasting. I found myself standing without knowing what to do,” recalls Arellano. A period of less than two minutes is but a passing moment on the warm, idyllic landscape of rural Chile in the summertime; during a pulsing, roaring earthquake, when buildings are cracking and the earth breaking, terror makes every second draw on.

Like many others in Quillota, Arellano assumed the worst when the earthquake struck. It was manifest to her that thousands might have died. The next day, when she travelled through the countryside, she assumed the entire nation was destroyed. Her nerves frayed, she now treads cautiously, attentive for yet another of the aftershocks to strike. She didn’t lose much this time, but she considers herself lucky.

“In a seismic country, crowded with volcanoes and tectonic failures, you always have to be alert.”

Arellano’s feelings are shared by many Chileans I meet during my self-guided tour in early-March of some of hardest-hit regions of southern Chile.

“While I was passing through Talca by bus, I was seeing the houses destroyed, street lights and trees lying on the ground, four-meter holes on the highways, fallen bridges, people injured and desperate, crying,” Rodrigo Molina, an art student at the Catholic University of Valparaíso pauses as he recalls the scene of destruction around him the day after the earthquake struck. “I thought – without having more information – that was the state of the whole country; that Chile was in ruins, completely destroyed.”

“I am 27 years old and I have lived to see and feel a never-before-occurred phenomenon like this,” Molina says. “I have never seen these kinds of effects after any disaster.”

Although the centre of the earthquake was restricted to a relatively small area, its impact was far-reaching. Around 93% of Chileans were with no electricity following the earthquake, for several days in some places. Curfews were imposed and martial law enforced following the earthquake in the hardest hit areas, the Region of Bio Bio and Maule. Many areas were deemed “catastrophe zones,” where riot police and other officials were dispatched to limit looting and pillaging.

“The sunlight, which soon appeared [the earthquake occurred in the early morning], uncovered cities that seemed to be abandoned,” says Molina, who remembers that the people of Talca and the other torn cities were afraid of aftershocks and other disasters. “There were few people in the streets.” Those people he could see, however, seemed frantic. “Everyone was running from one place to another.”

The first day after the earthquake, survivors were desperately seeking information about its impact and attempting to establish contact with their relatives and friends. Very little information was available besides the intensity of the earthquake, which is relatively meaningless for those seeking information about the effects of the event.

That weeks later, seismologists would estimate Chile’s landmass grew by 1.2 square kilometres, or that the earth’s axis was moved by eight centimetres, or that the day was shortened by 1.26 microseconds, all due to the earthquake, for example, is utterly irrelevant to those trying to rebuild their homes and businesses.

The real effects of the catastrophe would not be known for days, and until then people continued to fear the worst. There was no electricity and water for most of the south-central area, and people like Arellano and Molino had to focus on just getting by with limited resources. All efforts were focused on establishing contact.