'The building was swaying. It was impossible to stand up'

IRISH IN CHILE:SLIGO-BORN MARTIN Flannery was asleep in his third-floor apartment in Chile's capital city Santiago when Saturday's earthquake struck.

“It was the noise that was most frightening. The entire building was swaying and within five seconds the lights had gone out. It was impossible to stand up and I was desperately trying to hold on to things just to keep steady.”

Mr Flannery, who owns a pub in Santiago, moved to Chile 15 years ago with Irish company Fyffes. In 2000, he opened Flannery’s Irish pub in the northeast of the city. Although the pub escaped structural damage it has remained closed since Saturday. “The main issue now is we still have no electricity. I’m hoping to open tomorrow, with the help of a generator.”

He said that while the northeast of the city emerged relatively unscathed from the earthquake, highways and underpasses around the city, as well as the airport have sustained significant damage.

Recurring aftershocks are also impeding any return to normality he says. “We were still experiencing tremors every 20 minutes in the first day or so, and then every hour up to Monday morning. Some of these were quite severe, measuring 5.5 and 6.0 on the Richter scale.”

Irishman Brian O’Sullivan, who obtained Chilean residency just hours before the quake, was in the city of Rancagua, an hour south of Santiago, when the earthquake struck.

“Everything shook up and down like really violent turbulence on an airplane for three minutes. First the power went. Then a load of alarms went off. After the first minute, it started to snow plaster from the roof, and then there were hundreds of bangs, thuds, crashes and smashes all around. About two minutes later, when it all died down, a huge mushroom cloud of dust rose over the city.”

Nigel Gallagher, from Coleraine in Co Derry, owns El Irlandes Irish pub in the coastal city of Valparaiso. He had decided to take an early night on Saturday, leaving the pub in the hands of his stepson. “I was just dozing off when it struck, but things were in full swing at the bar. It was the busiest time of the week for us. The place was packed.”

When the earthquake struck, people initially assumed that it was a tremor – a common occurrence in the area, he says.

“When people realised that it was a full earthquake it became chaotic. The waiter was trying to keep everyone calm, and to make sure they stayed inside the building near the doorway, the safest place in an earthquake, but most people managed to make their way onto the street, despite the threat of falling debris.”

He said while the pub sustained significant internal damage, structurally the 200-year-old building remained sound, although cracks have appeared in the walls.

“Since I moved to Chile six and a half years ago, locals have always said that a major earthquake was due. As a result, a lot of buildings around here were built with earthquakes in mind. It’s the places where badly built buildings were erected that are really suffering.”