Article "Camden student fine following Chilean earthquake"

Here is an article written in the local paper. It's basically about my parents and what they went through waiting to hear from me after the earthquake.


"Camden student fine following Chilean earthquake"


By Lynda Clancy | Feb 28, 2010

Taylor Hall, an exchange student with Rotary International, called home soon after 2 p.m. on Feb. 28, telling his parents, Ron and Paige Hall of Camden that he was fine following the massive earthquake that struck Chile Feb. 27.

Taylor's father, Ron Hall, said Feb. 28 that he had just gotten off the phone, able to talk finally with his son following a couple of days of trying desperately to reach him. The earthquake, measuring 8.8 on the Richter scale, demolished telephone communication, although slowly connections were getting restored. Taylor was able to reach his family from the office of his host family father, who is an oral surgeon in Chiguayante, a community approximately 10 miles south of Concepcion.

"We have been through 36 hours of hell," said Ron Hall. "We told him that everyone in the town of Camden was concerned and worried about him."

A number of military and diplomatic corps had also been enlisted to help contact Taylor. Ron Hall, a 1978 graduate of West Point Academy, had set his network of Coast Guard, Navy and State Department contacts in motion.

"He [Taylor] is going to be bombarded with calls in the next few days," said Ron Hall.

Likewise, the Rotary community has been sending out notices via Facebook and other online networks to help make contact with anyone who would know of Taylor's situation.

Taylor told his parents that he was safe and that before the earthquake hit, he had been at a party marking the end of the school holidays. Celebrations in Chile begin late in the evening, 10 or 11 p.m., and tend to end toward the early morning. Hall had been awake when the earthquake hit at 3:34 a.m. (1:34 a.m. Eastern Standard Time), and at the home of his host parents -- a single family dwelling. The worst of the tremors resulted in broken glasses and paintings falling to the floor. When the earthquake hit, Taylor immediately moved beneath a door frame, considered a safer place to ride out an earthquake when inside a structure.

The aftershocks, however, continued to plague Chile, and while Taylor was on the phone with his parents Feb. 28, another shock was felt. Ron asked for a description, and Taylor said, "there goes a plant, moving across the floor."

Taylor is a 2009 graduate of Camden Hills Regional High School and is spending a year enrolled in a Chilean high school.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the epicenter of the quake was 70 miles northeast of Concepcion, just near the shoreline of the Pacific ocean and 22 miles deep in the earth. The earthquake was apparently so strong that it was felt 690 miles away in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and even 1,800 miles on the other side of the continent in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

"This earthquake occurred at the boundary between the Nazca and South American tectonic plates," summarized the Geological Survey. "The two plates are converging at a rate of 80 mm per year. The earthquake occurred as thrust-faulting on the interface between the two plates, with the Nazca plate moving down and landward below the South American plate.

"Coastal Chile has a history of very large earthquakes. Since 1973, there have been 13 events of magnitude 7.0 or greater. The February 27 shock originated about 230 km north of the source region of the magnitude 9.5 earthquake of May, 1960 – the largest earthquake worldwide in the last 200 years or more. This giant earthquake spawned a tsunami that engulfed the Pacific Ocean. An estimated 1,600 lives were lost to the 1960 earthquake and tsunami in Chile, and the 1960 tsunami took another 200 lives among Japan, Hawaii, and the Philippines. Approximately 870 km to the north of the Feb. 27 earthquake is the source region of the magnitude 8.5 earthquake of Nov. 1922. This great quake significantly impacted central Chile, killing several hundred people and causing severe property damage. The 1922 quake generated a 9-meter local tsunami that inundated the Chile coast near the town of Coquimbo; the tsunami also crossed the Pacific, washing away boats in Hilo harbor, Hawaii. The magnitude 8.8 earthquake of February 27, 2010 ruptured the portion of the South American subduction zone separating these two massive historical earthquakes."