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El Salvador earthquake felt in Pasco
By SAUNDRA AMRHEIN © St. Petersburg Times, published January 16, 2001 Marta Calidonio listened in terror to the phone Saturday afternoon as the radio blared and customers milled about the pizza parlor. Have you heard from your husband, a relative from New York asked. The Port Richey woman explained she had been working in the couple's pizza parlor -- Antonio's Pizza and Subs on Ridge Road -- all day Saturday and expected that her husband, Antonio, had landed in El Salvador and should be driving to his brother's house by now. "You didn't hear the news?" the relative asked, voice rising. "They just had an earthquake in El Salvador." Oh, my God, Calidonio said she thought to herself. She felt weak and wanted to cry out but struggled to stay calm for the sake of her nearby 7-year-old daughter and 14-year-old niece, whose parents live in El Salvador. Her husband was scheduled to land in El Salvador at 11:30 a.m. Saturday -- five minutes before a magnitude 7.6 earthquake tore through the Central American country, triggering landslides that killed about 600 people and damaged nearly 34,000 houses. She remembered that her husband did something strange at the airport that morning. Usually nervous before traveling, Antonio Calidonio, a businessman who has owned the Pasco restaurant since 1988, never gives hugs or kisses before he leaves. It's typically just a "see you." But on Saturday morning at the Tampa International Airport before his flight to Miami and the connection to El Salvador, Antonio Calidonio hugged and kissed his wife and said, "I love you." As Marta Calidonio's mind raced on what to tell her daughter and stepchildren, the call-waiting on her phone beeped. She told the New York relative to call her back if she heard something and she would do the same. "I have to go because I have another call coming in," she told her husband's sister-in-law. Then, on the other line she heard the most glorious sound: her husband's voice. "Where are you?" she cried. "I'm in Miami," he answered. "Oh, thank God, thank God," she replied. A mechanical problem in Miami forced the connecting flight to El Salvador to leave an hour late, he said. Just 45 minutes outside of El Salvador, still hovering over Mexico, the American Airlines captain came on the public address system and announced to Antonio Calidonio and his fellow passengers that they were returning to Miami due to a small earthquake. Within minutes, passengers found out otherwise, using phones on the plane to call relatives in the United States to find out the earthquake was massive and caused substantial damage in El Salvador. Soon they were walking the aisles, spreading the news. "We've been through this so many times," Antonio Calidonio said Monday, back at his parlor, explaining the initial calm reaction of passengers to the news before the phone calls. "This is the first time the earthquake was more strong. We've never had this magnitude. People never expected it was going to make so much damage." He was traveling to El Salvador to visit his three brothers and their families. As he returned to Miami he worried about his relatives. But he wasn't as upset as some of the people who were roaming the plane with furrowed brows, buzzing back and forth with updates. "I had the confidence God would protect them," he said. Once in Miami, he learned through his wife that his relatives in El Salvador were safe. At the airport in El Salvador, however, the walls of the terminal quivered when the quake hit, throwing everything on shelves in the stores onto the floor. "The airport was shaking, the roofing from the airport was flying to pieces outside," Mr. Calidonio said, repeating the news from relatives who were there to pick him up. His brothers and a friend grabbed hands and ran outside in the blinding dust as screaming crowds ran along with them into the parking lot. The airport later closed. That was only the start of the worries. With major roads washed out by landslides, the typical journey of 11/2 hours from the airport to their homes in Santa Ana took his brothers almost 10 hours. Marta Calidonio had a few more hours of heartache after she heard her husband was safe. Phone lines into El Salvador were jammed. She was unable to reach her parents and two brothers until 4:30 p.m. Saturday, when she learned that all of them were fine. "I knew from (Antonio's) sister-in-law that one of the churches down there was totally demolished, and the highway going through town where we lived is totally demolished," she said. "I thought, "This has to be very serious.' " It wasn't until later Saturday night, with Antonio Calidonio safe and back in their Jasmine Lakes home, that the couple saw on the news just how serious and devastating the quake was on their native El Salvador. "We didn't know about it until we got home (Saturday night) and at the 11:30 news in Spanish, they started showing all the pictures," Marta Calidonio said. The view sent chills through them. "We thought, you could have been there," she said.
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