| Mamaroneck native recounts Chile earthquake experience |
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| Written by Paige Rentz |
| Thursday, 04 March 2010 18:02 |
Abigail Benudis’ study-abroad experience began with a night she’ll never forget. The 20-year-old Mamaroneck resident was to begin her program with the Institute for the International Education of Students in Santiago, Chile on Feb. 27, but was greeted instead by an 8.8-magnitude terremoto, an earthquake that damaged more than 500,000 homes and killed more than 750 people. A public health and Spanish major, the Tufts University junior was in Santiago to study her Spanish fluency and intern or volunteer with a community health organization. Benudis and her travel companion were staying in a hostel in the Providencia neighborhood of Santiago when they were awoken by shaking. Initially thinking the rumbling was from the subway line that ran under the hostel, they got out of bed and were thrust across the room. “It was as if someone had lifted up our room and shook it with full force,” said Benudis. “The pictures that were hanging began to fall and our luggage shifted across the floor.”As Benudis tried to find her way out of the room in the dark, car alarms rang and glass came crashing down in the hallway. She and her fellow traveler found themselves locked in the room from the inside, unable to find the key with no lights and the room in disarray. All they could do, said Benudis, was stand “in the locked entryway of our hostel, hand in hand, watching the paint crack from the foundation of the ceiling and waiting for trembling to run its course.” When the quake subsided, the pair was finally able to find the key and head downstairs to the lobby, where they gathered with the other guests of the hostel, stunned and waiting to see what was happening. Back in Mamaroneck, it was a long and unnerving morning for Elissa and Meir Benudis, as they found out about the earthquake at 6:30 in the morning. They were unable to get into contact with their daughter for several hours until an email from Abigail let them know she was safe. “It was scary,” said Benudis’ mother, “but luckily everything turned out alright.” That morning, representatives of the study-abroad program whisked Benudis away to her host family’s home; she is on lockdown there, not permitted to go outside per the recommendation of the U.S. Embassy in Santiago. However, she will not be staying long as administrators of her program have ruled her host family’s home structurally unsound due to a floor-to-ceiling crack in the master bedroom of the apartment.  The area in which Benudis is staying is much more stable than many areas in the vicinity of the quake, with cars on the road and people out in the streets when she was transported through Providencia from the hostel to her host family’s house on Saturday morning. Every business on the block was closed except for a Pizza Hut, where she and her host family were able to procure lunch and dinner. Though the residents of Providencia were lucky, Benudis’ host mother, Erika, was met on Sunday with “extraordinarily long lines, dozens of security guards, and a system put in place where only 20 Chileans could enter the supermarket at a time,” explained Benudis. Bread had doubled in price by the kilo, and there were limited amounts of bottled water available, but the situation was better for them than in many parts of the city. Benudis said she thinks the worst is over, that Chile is a country accustomed to quakes, resilient and “ready to face the devastation and move forward.” As her host mother explained the situation, “Aquí, la Madre Tierra siempre está diciendonos algo. (Here, Mother Earth is always telling us something.)”
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