At 3:30 a.m. Saturday, Brian Wilson was asleep in his eighth-floor apartment in Santiago, Chile, when an earthquake hit, shaking the ground and everything on it for three solid minutes.

"It's the same sensation as when you are flying in an airplane and you get into heavy turbulence," Mr. Wilson, the state of Georgia's trade representative in Chile, told GlobalAtlanta in a telephone interview Monday. "Everything started shaking. "

Bookshelves crashed to the floor. Glassware in cabinets shattered. The electricity flickered, then went off. 

"We thought the building was going to fall apart," said Mr. Wilson. 

The earthquake was a magnitude 8.0 in Santiago, Mr. Wilson said. Saturday's earthquake was centered off the coast of Chile, south of Santiago, closer to the city of Concepción, where it was a magnitude 8.8. By comparison, the earthquake that devastated Haiti in January was a magnitude 7.0.

An emergency generator powered the elevator in Mr. Wilson's apartment building. When he emerged outside, the damage was less than he expected, a fact he attributes to the strict building codes in Santiago. His building and most others had no major damage. Power has now been restored in much of Santiago and Mr. Wilson made it into his office  Monday.

"Santiago is operating 98 percent as a normal city," he said.

But in southern Chile, damage is much more severe because there are more older homes made of adobe that were less earthquake resistant, said Mr. Wilson.

There was some damage to the passenger terminal at Santiago's Arturo Merino Benitez International Airport, but there was no runway damage, Mr. Wilson said.

Some international flights have been diverted to airports in northern Chile, where passengers can go through customs and then re-board the planes for Santiago, Mr. Wilson said. Since the passengers have already cleared customs, the flights to Santiago are treated as domestic flights. Passengers can exit the planes without having to go through the damaged terminal, he said.

The earthquake also damaged the Chilean ports, with southern ports more heavily hit than those in the center of the country. The central ports, which are 80 percent functional, should be able to make up for much of the loss of capacity in southern ports,  although there could still be some impact on exports, Mr. Wilson said.

Mr. Wilson, a native of Chile, has been Georgia's trade representative there for about five years as economic ties between Georgia and the South American country of 16 million continue to strengthen. 

Santiago hosted the Americas Competitiveness Forum last fall, an event Atlanta hosted in 2007 and  2008 and will host again next year. 

Late last year, Chile opened a small trade office in Atlanta. José Goñi, Chile’s ambassador to the United States, who was in Atlanta for the announcement, called the Atlanta trade office an investment that will yield big returns for both countries. 

“We are convinced the business opportunities are enormous,” Mr. Goñi told GlobalAtlanta in an interview at the Metro Atlanta Chamber.  The trade commission is called ProChile and operates under the government’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Relations between the U.S. and Chile are at their best level ever, the ambassador said. The two countries signed a free trade agreement in 2003 that eliminated tariffs on about 85 percent of products sold, with all tariffs to be eliminated in 12 years.

“In the first five years of the free trade agreement, bilateral trade has increased more than 300 percent,” he said. “This is probably one of the most successful free trade agreements both for Chile and the United States.”

Chile hopes to increase that trade even more through the opening of more trade offices in the U.S. ProChile opened an office in Chicago last year and also has offices in Los Angeles, Miami and Washington. 

The trade offices help Chile better understand the different regions of the U.S., said the ambassador. “We can’t work with all the union in the same way,” he said. “We have to be a little more local. ”

Chile has an economy that is heavily driven by exports. Top exports to the U.S. include wine, salmon and fruits. U.S. exports to Chile are dominated by cars, computers and machinery. From 1990 to 2008, the Chilean economy averaged a 5.8 percent annual growth rate, the ambassador said.

For more on Georgia's Chilean trade representative, click here.

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