It was 3: 34 in the morning. Suddenly the bed moved a little. I woke up. That bed used to move a lot so I just thought it was my wife rolling (翻)over. I looked over to her and she was fast asleep. So I thought it was just another small tremor (轻微地震). We used to get many small tremors in Chile. But then everything in the room started making noise. The tremor got a bit stronger. My wife woke up.

I went to open the front door to make sure it wouldn’t get stuck while my wife went to see how the kids were. They were still fast asleep.

I got to the front door and left it open. When I turned around to go back to the bedroom, the full force of the earthquake started to hit. I couldn’t move forward. While I was trying to hold myself up against the wall, I looked out the window. It was frightening, some buildings coming in and out of view and some already falling down. Then the earthquake made a strong push and our lights went out. In the darkness, I thought, “This is it! We’re not coming out of this alive. ”

Luckily, the violent(剧烈的)shaking gradually slowed down and then stopped. I could finally walk to our children’s room. My wife had been standing over them during the strongest part of the earthquake, making sure nothing fell on them.

After such a big earthquake, we expected the “smaller” aftershocks to be still very strong. There was still a chance that the building could collapse. So we woke the kids up, got some basic things and started to walk down the emergency(紧急情况)stairs. . . all 22 floors of them.

When we finally arrived at the ground floor many other people had already arrived, some in pajamas (睡衣), some half-dressed. The good news was everyone got out of the building safe and sound.