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Wakari resident Gillian Thomas was able to relax and concentrate on making strawberry jam yesterday afternoon after finding out her 17-year-old son, Billy Greer, was safe in Santiago, Chile.
Billy, a former pupil of Otago Boys High School, is completing a year as a Rotary exchange student and was due to start school in the Chilean capital today.
After hearing about the massive earthquake - which has left more than 300 people dead - shortly after 7am yesterday, Ms Thomas said she had "a terrible feeling in her stomach".
She then spent an anxious few hours before she received an internet message from her son about 10am.
She was very relieved to find out Billy was fine, although his father, Richard Greer, "seemed to be perfectly confident" his son would be safe.
Ms Thomas said her son, the youngest of the couple's four children, was at a party when the earthquake struck about 3.30am local time (about 7.30pm in New Zealand) on Saturday.
Santiago, the Chilean capital, is about 325km northeast of Conception, which was near the epicentre of the 8.8 magnitude quake.
At first, Billy thought the music was shaking the floor, but then it got worse and he and fellow party-goers realised it was an earthquake.
He said people panicked, forgetting safe earthquake behaviour, and ran outside.
Slates were falling off the house and it was "pretty scary", he said.
Afterwards, they realised they could not call anyone and that public transport was not running so they could not go home.
When phone connections were re-established, his cellphone battery ran out, but he was able to call his host parents from a friend's place and his host family was able to come and collect him.
The apartments of the host parents (who live separately) had suffered some cracks to walls and, in one, some ceilings had fallen through.
Ms Thomas said her son, who has been in Chile since late January, had been looking forward to the start of school today, but it had been postponed.
Billy had already reported feeling several after-shocks, but Ms Thomas felt the significance of the disaster had not really sunk in for him yet.