March 12 marked two months since the disastrous 7.0 magnitude earthquake wrought destruction and catastrophe upon the Caribbean nation of Haiti. As a firsthand observer to the death, devastation, and despair, I find the past two months have been a blur of confusion, sorrow, and questioning. On Jan. 12, I was serving as an interpreter for five members of a Richmond-based Catholic Church Haiti committee on a visit to a partner school, clinic, and church in rural Haiti.

After Elliott Yamin landed at LAX, he kissed the ground.  Literally.  He had finally gotten home to Los Angeles after a harrowing six post-earthquake days in Chile.  But emotional aftershocks followed him.  “All last week, I was kind of on edge. I felt like the ground was constantly moving.

The largest aftershock since Chile’s devastating earthquake rocked the South American country Thursday minutes before the inauguration of President Sebastian Pinera.

The most powerful aftershock in six days sent terrified Chileans fleeing into quake-shattered streets and forced doctors to evacuate some patients from a major hospital on Friday as the nation struggled to comprehend the scope of the disaster that hit it.

Do you feel as though life is coming at you faster and harder? Does the world feel like a merry-go-round that you can’t get off, that is spinning more and more rapidly? Do not be alarmed. Your impressions are correct. You are, however, an extremely sensitive individual. Scientific analysis has revealed that the massive earthquake which struck Chile last weekend was so large that it redistributed the mass of the planet inward, and altered the Earth’s axis of rotation by roughly three inches. The result was to speed up our home world’s rotational velocity, just as a figure skater speeds up when she pulls her arms inward (all the news stories seemed to used this analogy, so we might as well too).

Local response to the earthquake in Chile has not reached the magnitude of the response to Haiti, in part because requests for aid haven’t been as urgent, participants said at a Chile Community Forum yesterday. The forum, which was organized by the Greater Richmond Chapter of the American Red Cross, was open to anyone with an interest in relief efforts after Chile’s magnitude-8.8 earthquake.

A pair of aftershocks only six seconds apart provoked a brief panic among citizens in Chile, but no tsunami warning was issued and no injuries or damage have been reported.

A Virginia-led international astronomy project in Chile was not damaged by the country’s 8.8-magnitude earthquake but will remain dark until Saturday because of earthquake-related issues. None of the staff or their families suffered serious injuries, although many reported severe property damage. Al Wootten, a Charlottesville astronomer who’s in Chile as the North American project scientist, said he and his wife, Ida, were more than 100 miles north of Santiago when the quake hit. The quake’s epicenter was about 200 miles south of Santiago.

The 40 retirees enjoying summer vacation at a seaside campground nestled under pine trees knew they had to move fast after Chile’s powerful earthquake struck.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton arrived in earthquake-ravaged Chile on Tuesday to offer the devastated country moral and material support as it recovers from the deadly disaster.

It was almost inevitable that the earthquake in Chile would be contrasted with the one in Haiti, given their proximity of time and place. Massive disasters such as these—earthquakes especially—are described in numbers, and numbers invite comparison. But it is not numbers who die. It is not numbers who get maimed, who get trapped beneath buildings, who wail over coffins, who return to where their houses once stood to stare at the rubble in mute incomprehension. Wittgenstein was right when he said the whole Earth cannot be in greater distress than one soul, and C.S. Lewis was right that there is no such thing as an aggregate sum of suffering, for no one suffers it. The knowledge of other peoples’s misery can contribute to our own, but one person cannot feel all others’ pain.

Elliott Yamin has been tweeting frantically this afternoon that he’s trying to leave Chile by tomorrow.

Security forces said Monday they arrested dozens of people for violating curfew after looters sacked virtually every market in this hard-hit city and Chile’s earthquake toll surpassed 700. President Michelle Bachelet promised imminent deliveries of food, water and shelter for thousands living on the streets.

Elliott Yamin, the former Richmonder and 2006 “American Idol” finalist, escaped injury yesterday when a massive earthquake struck Chile. Yamin was in Viña del Mar, about 350 miles north of the quake’s epicenter, for a music festival. He said in a text message last evening that because there was no power in Viña del Mar, occupants had just been bused to Santiago.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti—The earthquake in Chile was far stronger than the one that struck Haiti last month—yet the death toll in this Caribbean nation is magnitudes higher. The reasons are simple. Chile is wealthier and infinitely better prepared, with strict building codes, robust emergency response and a long history of handling seismic catastrophes.