Yes, our friends (and their cat, dog and duck) are OK. Valparaíso experienced several minutes of 7.0 shaking--which was apparently pretty darned terrifying, but Kate and John's house held together, as did their science labs. John's mom, who is 89 and lives in Santiago, was also OK. Many of the science labs in Santiago were wrecked however. The water in Valp'o has to keep getting turned off for repairs, and of course the cities you hear about on the news are in real trouble; the small towns that were swept out to sea by the tsunami are largely just gone.... There are still aftershocks happening as well. It's bad.
We are all so thankful that the people we know survived (again!), but it has been hard to think about glibly posting more photos of our excellent adventure in this situation. Maybe it's important to get the word out about Chile even more though, so I'll work on it.
In the meantime, please make a (another?) donation to Doctors Without Borders (linked trough that red and brown and white Knitter woman drawing in the right sidebar) or the Red Cross or another legitimate emergency relief organization. People need help everywhere these days it seems.
Tell people you love them.
