Deer Lake -
When Danielle Burridge traveled to Chile two weeks ago with a friend, she was hoping to learn some Spanish and immerse herself in a new culture.
It was a week after her arrival in Pichilemu, a small seaside community, that the magnitude-8.8 earthquake hit 200 kilometres away, rocking the country.
Danielle's parents, Dana and Callista Burridge, live in Deer Lake and spent last weekend glued to the television and Internet, constantly checking updates on the situation in the South American country. They had had contact with their 29-year-old daughter through MSN the night before the earthquake.
"At 6 a.m. Saturday we got a call from her fiancÉ in Red Deer to say there was an earthquake in Chile," said Callista. "All we were thinking was 'Where is she, is her community struck, are we going to hear from her?'
"Saturday was really tough because we had no information exactly as to if she was affected or not and was she safe or not," she said.
Callista said by Sunday they had garnered more information from news reports and it seemed her community was far enough away from the epicenter that there wasn't extensive devastation.
"Our greatest fear was a tsunami," said Danielle's father, Dana. "We figured she would survive the earthquake because she was living in a house, not in a hotel or high-rise building, but our fear was 'Would they get the warning on the tsunami?' And 'How soon would they get the warning?'"
Taken out by a wave
The town where Danielle is staying has one street bordering on the ocean. It was taken out by waves according to Dana. He said the community of Pichilemu is closer to the epicentre than the capital city of Santiago, which received damage from the quake. As of Wednesday, officials said the death toll had reached 800 with a few hundred more people missing.
Danielle has been staying with a family in Pichilemu as part of her cultural exchange program.
"The house is intact, but up until (Wednesday) they didn't have any electricity or phone service," he said.
By Sunday evening, the parents got their first breath of relief when they received word that their daughter had been seen and she was OK.
"That wasn't until Sunday night. There were two days of just feeling like you could make any communication, and we just had to sit and wait," said Callista.
Danielle was able to make contact with her fiancÉ and parents on Wednesday evening through Skype at an Internet cafÉ in the community that is being powered by a generator.
"She needed to hear familiar voices; her fiancÉ's, parents' and sister's voice. She's been traumatized by this; all the aftershocks are traumatizing as well," said Callista.
They were told by Danielle that she stopped keeping track of the aftershock tremors after she counted more than 100 of them. Dana said she even felt a tremor while speaking with her family on the Internet Wednesday night.
"She said it's like being seasick, with everything moving," said Dana.
Callista said one thing that consoled her over the long weekend of waiting for communication with her daughter was that she's experienced a child travelling far away before, with a son who has traveled in Europe multiple times.
"He wouldn't have contact with the family for days. It would upset me and he taught me that there are circumstances whereby you just can't access communication. We have such availability to communication that once it's taken out from under us, we're all lost," said Callista.
Danielle's parents aren't the only ones feeling lost in this situation. Danielle, a beginner in Spanish is currently staying in the country. Up until Thursday afternoon, Air Canada had suspended their commercial flights to Santiago due to the earthquake.
"She's got a language barrier ... She has made arrangements to stay with (a family in Pichilemu) for two weeks, the two weeks are up on the weekend and she doesn't know where she's going," said Callista.
Danielle has three-and-a-half more weeks of her program and is supposed to move to a second community shortly.
"In order to travel to the second community she has to travel through the earthquake zone and that's not possible right now. They're discouraging travel," said Callista.
Danielle, originally from Deer Lake, has lived in Red Deer for three years where she works as a social worker.
"She wanted a different experience. I think it's more than she asked for," said Dana.
