TWELVE DAYS BEFORE ENTERING THE PRESIDENTIAL OFFICE

The reality of my life has changed. —Interior Minister-Designate Rodrigo Hinzpeter

"Oh my God, it's not stopping," recalled a Time magazine reporter in Santiago who had been in a bar when the earth started moving. Glass shards everywhere, patrons were clambering out the shattered windows, others rushed for the door.

Visiting Santiago from Oregon, Sylvia Dostal had booked a room on the twenty-third floor of the capital's Marriott Hotel. "I had been in earthquakes before," including the deadly 6.9-magnitude event in 1989 near San Francisco, "but this was different," she said. "The building was swaying AND moving up and down!"

Near the epicenter, 210 miles south, Osvaldo González was on a river island with dozens of relatives when the earthquake happened. He began shuttling family members off the island in a boat, as did his cousin, Osvaldo Gomez, with another boat. But then, after several successful crossings, recalled González, "I never imagined what was about to happen." A thirty-foot wave surged up the river just as he was momentarily at the shore, but his cousin was still midstream when it hit. González saw his cousin's boat wafted high on the crest of the enormous swell.

Karina Murga had been partying in a nightclub in the nearby city of Constitución: "It was about 3:20 in the morning. We were close to the beach, celebrating a cousin's birthday," she said, "when the ground started to shake. At first it was soft, but then it got strong, so strong we couldn't hold ourselves up." Some yelled, "Tremor, tremor!" Others, "Earthquake, tsunami!" When Murga emerged outside, she recalled, "You couldn't see anything. There was a cloud of earth—horrible—you had to yell people's names to know where they were, because you couldn't see them."

Katrina Murga's six-year-old daughter, Carla, had been left for the night with friends. "I yelled, 'My daughter! My daughter! I need my daughter! I have to go get my daughter!' Like a crazy woman, 'My daughter!'" Murga would soon reunite with her unscathed six-year-old. Osvaldo González would never find his cousin.

THE PRESIDENT AND INTERIOR-MINISTER-TO-BE

Although more than two hundred miles from the epicenter, the capital city's shaking also aroused the president-elect's interior minister-designate, Rodrigo Hinzpeter. He and the new president would be taking power in less than two weeks. But as the first signs of the calamity's enormity became shockingly evident, the future minister quickly appreciated that the new administration's leadership of the country was about to be profoundly tested and redefined. It would have to address a whole new order of very unexpected business.

The designated minister of the interior and public safety (as Rodrigo Hinzpeter would be formally entitled)—the premier member of the presidential cabinet who would become vice president if the president were abroad or incapacitated—talked with his wife, checked on his three children, and attempted to call his mother. Telephone lines were dead or jammed, but after many redials, he found that his family was well and safe. Yet he also soon realized that tens of thousands of other families were suffering, and that any return to the anticipated governing path was not in the cards: "The reality of my life has changed." Hinzpeter's portfolio included public order and internal security, direction of all domestic policies, and oversight of regional authorities throughout the country. Every element would be affected.

Hinzpeter raced across the near-empty streets of Santiago at 4:30 a.m. to the party's campaign headquarters, where the future government had been readying itself ever since its victory at the polls on January 17. Plans for stimulating growth and creating jobs had been on the table yesterday, but today they would be swept aside for the urgency at hand. "We were waiting to start the government," recalled the future minister. "In a few days the government team would have to start working, so from the very beginning we had no time to lose" and "we had to understand what happened to the country."

The interior-minister-to-be had managed to learn a little about the country's condition before exiting his home, before all power had been severed. But now in the car, with a working radio, as he sped across the darkened capital he was hearing spot reports indicating that the destruction was severe and extensive. "I began to understand that it was a really big mess," he recalled, "more than I imagined when I was at home." Panicked citizens were already in long queues at gasoline stations, he saw, though to no avail, since the station pumps themselves were powerless.

Hinzpeter called the president-elect to compare what little data they had gleaned so far; they agreed to meet later that morning at an agency of the Ministry of Interior, the National Emergency Office, abbreviated as ONEMI (La Oficina Nacional de Emergencia del Ministerio del Interior—National Office of Emergency of the Interior Ministry). Similar in charter to the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), ONEMI was responsible for responding to large-scale national crises.

The soon-to-be-inaugurated president and interior minister entered the National Emergency Center at 11 a.m. The enormity of the moment was becoming all too evident. "The earthquake had been huge," recalled the president. "It had affected six regions where more than 70 percent of the Chilean population lived, and the consequences in terms of life had been very huge." He added, "We already knew that more than 500 people had been killed and that the economic damage had also been massive."

Sebastián Piñera and Rodrigo Hinzpeter returned to their campaign headquarters both to consult and to instruct the incoming cabinet, even though technically none of them had official responsibility yet. The president asked the minister-of-finance-designate, Felipe Larraín, to forecast the total costs of reconstructing the country; the future housing minister, Magdalena Matte, to estimate the number of homes destroyed; the future minister-of-public-works-elect, Hernán de Solminihac, to assess the damage to public infrastructure; and the future minister of the...