Twenty-one Syracuse University students in Chile are all safe following the 8.8 magnitude earthquake that hit the country Saturday morning, said Jon Booth, executive director of SU Abroad.

‘I think it’s important that students know that our group was very blessed to have stayed safe during the earthquake,’ said Keeta Koalska, a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences currently studying in Chile, in an e-mail.

SU’s program in Chile is based in Santiago, about 200 miles from Concepcion, where the epicenter of the earthquake hit. The earthquake occurred Saturday morning at 3:30 a.m. It is tied for the fifth-largest earthquake in the world since 1900, The New York Times reported. Chile’s earthquake comes about a month and a half after a magnitude 7 earthquake struck Haiti and killed more than 200,000 people.

Nineteen undergraduate students and two graduate students from SU are currently in Chile. The graduate students stayed after studying abroad last semester and are no longer part of the SU Abroad program. SU Abroad officials still checked in with them to make sure they were OK, Booth said. Two SU Abroad staff members are in Chile and have been communicating with the students and keeping their families and SU informed on the conditions there, Booth said. The parents of the students have been contacted twice already by the university, he said.

Because of the earthquake, some of the students do not have electricity or Internet access. But all of the students currently have access to water and, within the next 24 to 48 hours, all are expected to have electricity and the Internet again, he said.

Even though the epicenter of the earthquake hit 200 miles away from where the students are staying, they have seen damage to their host families’ houses and the surrounding area. One student, Sam Disston, said he and his host family are staying with other family members because his host family’s house currently has no water or gas.

Jaclyn Humphrey, a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences, said in an e-mail she and her host family were sleeping when the earthquake hit.

‘When I first felt the earthquake, I thought it may have been a dream. I was very disoriented,’ she said. ‘The earthquake was very short – it was under two minutes, but it felt like it lasted a long time.’

SU Abroad had previously instructed the students on what to do if an earthquake occurred, Humphrey said. The host families were also well prepared to handle the situation, she said. SU Abroad coordinators called or visited each of the students after the earthquake to find out if they had electricity and water, she said.

The undergraduate students arrived in South America in January and spent a month in Ecuador for intensive language training. They arrived in Chile in mid-February and spent 10 days traveling the country. The students had just moved in with their host families in Santiago on Friday, the evening before the earthquake hit, Booth said.

Classes, which were originally scheduled to start Monday, have been postponed to start on March 8, so the university can make sure there is no structural damage to the buildings, he said.

kronayne@syr.edu

– Asst. News Editor Rebecca Kheel contributed reporting to this article.

Published on March 1, 2010 at 12:00 pm