Harding students traveling abroad in Chile were not affected by the 8.2-magnitude earthquake that rocked the Latin American country on Tuesday.
The earthquake was off the coast of northern Chile and prompted landslides, power outages and a tsunami, according to CNN. Another earthquake, a 7.6-magnitude aftershock, struck the same region on Wednesday night, according to Fox News.
Students at HULA were about 1,000 miles away from the effected area, but were still under tsunami warning after Tuesday’s earthquake.
“We didn’t feel anything, but (HULA administrator) Tom Hook came in while we were all hanging out in the student center and told us that there had been an earthquake about 1,000 miles north of where we live,” Sydni Sansom, a sophomore studying at HULA, said.”A little bit later, a group of about six of us decided to go into town for ice cream at a place we call ‘Brovs,’ but on our way down the hill, a man stopped us and told us that we were under a tsunami watch and that the police would not let us go down.”
Sansom said the group watched for a tsunami, but “it never came and we went back to watching our movie and playing spades in the dining room.”
After the earthquake on Tuesday, Debbie Baird, a faculty member at HULA, posted a message on her Facebook page to reassure friends and family that the group was safe.
“We have not felt any tremors, and we are fine,” Baird’s post said. “Please pray for those who have been affected.”
