A Red Deer man is trying to contact his fiancée in Chile after an 8.8 magnitude earthquake tore apart houses, bridges and highways in the country early Saturday morning.
Winston Bull last spoke with his financée Danielle Burridge, of Red Deer, on Friday at 3 p.m. He first heard of the earthquake when he flicked on the television on Saturday.
Burridge went down to Chile to do a cultural exchange and language immersion program, with colleague Lindsay Stein, of Red Deer.
All day on Saturday, Bull waited by the phone, checked his e-mail, MSN and Facebook accounts hoping for a message from his fiancée, but many of the phone and communications lines are either down or busy in the country.
“When you do get through it’s just ringing through. There is no answer. The phones just don’t connect,” he said.
Bull has phoned the Canadian Foreign Affairs department and tried to glean whatever information he can from online news sources.
Burridge is in the community of Pichilemu, a town along the coast of Chile, and a couple of hundred kilometres southwest of the earthquake’s epicentre in the Pacific Ocean.
Through a relative of a friend Bull has heard that the community of Pichilemu, where Burridge is, has only suffered minor structural damage.
“I’m more worried about the ocean than the structural damage,” Bull said.
Dana Cryderman, a spokesman for the Canadian Foreign Affairs office, said Canadian government officials are currently assessing the situation to determine the damage in Chile and the potential impact on Canadians present in the country.
Cryderman said there are 1,100 Canadians registered on the Foreign Affairs system and 60 believed to be in the affected area.
Friends and relatives in Canada should call the Department of Foreign Affairs emergency operations centre in Ottawa at 1-800-387-3124 or by e-mail at sos@international.gc.ca.
sobrien@www.reddeeradvocate.com
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sobrien@www.reddeeradvocate.com