by Pedro “Peter” Niada, at 4.30 a.m., was sure that a meteorite near his house had fallen in the coast, lifted him out of his foundations and sent him through the air. He took two steps down the stairs, felt water splashing his feet and found that the house was falling.
Nothing made sense. Why did the house tip over? Why could he hear what sounded like a waterfall outside? The noise of the wooden break led him to withdraw the curtain at Flying Fish (El Pez Volador), the 12-bed tourist lodge, which he had built by hand.
It was February 27, 2010 and Niada was danced by the celebrations at the end of summer in the village of San Juan Bautista on Robinson Crusoe Island, more than 600 km off the Chile coast. He stared into the moonlit night and now saw the island 100 meters away when his house was swept into the South Pacific. Only then did he remember that they had been hit by a colossal wave.
“Tsuuuuunaaaaami!” he screamed.
Fabiana Persia, his Argentine partner, slept and slept with Dante, her seven -year -old son, and Luz, her three -year -old daughter. Persia was not to do for practical jokes in the middle of the night. “Are you crazy?” She grabbed.
“There is a tsunami!” Niada screamed.
Persia withdrew the curtain. A kayak hit the window when the house continued to sink. Niada and Persia stared through the window and watched as a whirlpool -up -to -date fishing boats, nets and entire houses for a swirling chaos. Screaming tore the air when others who had been washed out at sea for help.
An uncanny glow flashed under water when the lifespan with lights (so that they radiated light flashes after contact with water) blinked from the sea floor. Gas canisters hissed from houses when they were born on the surface, and then they were silent when they disappeared into the depths.
A guest who was in the lodge jumped in action. The newly divorced Matthew Westcott had traveled to the tiny archipelago, which is known as Juan Fernández Islands. As an accomplished sailor, he forced to open a window for a better view of it. Westcott interviewed the horizon and immediately created an escape plan.
It was not an easy scene to read, but a small fishing boat that was 50 meters away moved in the same direction as the house. Westcott said Niada that he would take a chance and swim through the rubble. The boat, he said, was redemption.
Westcott was on board the boat in less than two minutes. Niada then climbed through the window – now angled sky – and instructed Persia to pass it on to Luz. After his daughter was hidden under one arm, Niada swam towards the boat and struggled to keep his child’s head over water and fear that they were passed out of the swirling rubble. When he reached the boat, Niada Luz went to Westcott, then swung around and swam away from security.
Back in his half submergen house, Niada said to Persia: “Take Dante!”, Convinced that he could bring his son to safety. Persia refused to give up the child who adhered to her neck. Nothing would separate mother and son. Together the three swam towards the small boat. Niada tried to extinguish a path through the mass of the branches and shattered houses as they heard the requests of their drowning neighbors.
Persia reached Dante to Westcott. She then flopped on board, followed by Niada seconds later. They started to turn. The boat whirled in the currents until an increase raised the rear. Like a surfer on the wave of a life, the boat pushed back towards the coast, slid over a rocky beach and temporarily grinded over the reach of the water. Nobody moved until Dante puts himself into practice.
“Well, Papa! Now, Papa!” he screamed. Seconds later, they jumped on land and went away from the sea. A spontaneous rescue square on the beach, which dragged the survivors out of the ruins, screamed: “Run! Run! Run!”
They heard a different wave closer. Barefoot under nails and glass, completely naked from his abrupt awakening and sprinted Niada with Dante in his arms. Persia only held steps behind. The path was slippery, but someone pulled it forward. They climbed 100 meters and tried to escape the ocean. Another wave smashed the coast.
“We had a cabin on the hill with some clothes,” says Niada. “Nothing was hit up there. We put the children on the children and they went to sleep. We stayed all night. It was only in the morning when the light broke. We could see. There was nothing left. Then we knew that people had died.”
When emergency radio and telephone systems were activated, news came about a powerful earthquake that had stumbled into the houses hundreds of kilometers along the central chilo coast and killed 525 people. On the mainland, three minutes of brutal shake left no doubt about what caused the destruction. But the 700 inhabitants of San Juan Bautista did not feel trembling, warned no warning that an earthquake with 8.8 on the Richter scale-the sixth of the sixth, which had ever been recorded-a huge wave from the southeast to them.
Nobody knows the exact speed of the tsunami, but the gigantic sea is covered in 49 minutes more than 600 km. When Persia looked down from her place high above the beach, she was stunned. “It was like an atomic bomb,” she says. “The houses were shredded into the hill.”
The only village on the island was crushed, four out of five houses was smashed. The police station, the school, the cemetery and almost all of the government had disappeared. So also had 16 people – a devastating loss for the small, tightly knitted community.
Niada volunteered for a cruel search: diving for the dead. The bodies were mixed into ruins, rarely intact and sometimes only identifiable by a ring on a finger or the remains of the clothing. Surviving buildings built a provisional monument with small wooden crosses that were decorated with flowers near the beach. Four victims were never recovered, including Dante’s best friend, a seven -year -old who was so small that he was called the nickname (“Pinpoint”) with Puntito.
Niada and Persia were shocked. This was the same bay in which 11 years earlier had held their marriage ceremony on board a small boat. Niada, the son of a professional diver, had lived his dream on the island. Even when he was four, he went through the house with his father’s flipper, slept with a diving mask and told anyone who would listen that one day he would be a frog man. As a teenager, his mother gave him a waterproof Nikon camera and allowed him to combine the love of diving with his passion for documenting the ocean depths.
Together with Persia, he practically lived under water. For 15 years they have been brought to the archipelago for 15 years, where the inspiration for Daniel Defoe’s Roman Robinson Crusoe, the Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk, was hot for four years in the early 18th century. Now, at the age of 40, Niada had seen his whole life washed away.
Niada flew from the island 10 days later and was shocked. He had lost friends, his business, his home. “I built it myself, cut the trees and sawed the boards,” says Niada. “Everything was gone.”
Diagnosed with depression and PTBs, he received pills, but they didn’t help. He couldn’t sleep or think clearly when he took the medication. And they didn’t do anything to suppress the nightmares when he had put on at night that his house was falling. It would take minutes for him to orient his mind and understand that he was actually far from the sea.
His depression continued when the family had difficulty finding a home. They lived briefly with his mother, had a stay with his father and his new wife and then moved the border to Argentina, where Persia’s family had a home. Nothing felt like a place until a friend gave them a small apartment in the Chilean capital Santiago. Niada, says Niada, is the first step to rebuild life that he had lost.
He endeavored to resume his relationship to diving. “I still loved the ocean, but I wanted to go to another place,” says Niada. He began to organize thousands of kilometers north of Chile, where he was able to photograph Manta rays off the Ecuador coast. “I had to be in the water and dive as far as possible.” But every trip in which his children or wife included leaving the woman felt risky. If he went, would he ever see her again?
In turn, Persia developed a more reluctant relationship with the ocean. If she could see the sea from home, it was too close. Only when she was high on a hill could she sleep.
Niada connected to Fisher Friends on the island and built a fish business and provided fish, crabs and squids at restaurants near Santiago. With the exception of the occasional knife, a professional danger for every regularly filleting fish, he looked little danger.
Then the islands started to call.
In December 2024, a team of German divers who were looking for the Juan Fernández Islands on the way for an experienced underwater guide searched. Niada needed work and thought he would be able to deal with fear. “I was sad, nostalgic and nervous,” says Niada, who attacked a small two-hour Piper piper piper-cheyenne for the two-hour flight in February.
Related: I was caught for 65 hours under 4,000 tons of rubble – and felt an amazing calm
Back in Cumberland Bay, on the bank, where San Juan Bautista is sitting, Niada saw a group of Robben puppies destroyed. It felt like the soft landing he needed. But when he prepared the diving equipment on the edge of the ocean, he wondered why the small police and the Chilean Marine contingent were decorated in formal dress. When he asked, the answer stunned him. It was February 27, the 15th anniversary of the tsunami.
Niada left his customers and approached a semicircle of people who gathered in front of a preacher. When his eyes landed on Niada, he shouted: “Peter! What? When did they arrive?”
Niada hardly had time to answer before the preacher devoured him in a bear reduction. Other survivors – including many of his former neighbors – found that he had returned. Some cried on his shoulder, others gave their shoulders to the now striking diver. Someone pushed fresh flowers into his hand, he joined the procession to the pier and they threw the flowers into the ocean, an offer for everything he had lost.
