Third-place 'American Idol' contestant Elliott Yamin became an unlikely voice from the Chilean earthquake after documenting his experience on Twitter.

Former "American Idol" contender Elliott Yamin was in Chile during Saturday's massive earthquake and has been tweeting his experience there.

"I just escaped w my life, from an 8.3 earthquake!!!…is everybody ok?…where was the [epicenter]?” Yamin wrote on Twitter moments after the quake, which was later determined to be an 8.8 magnitude.

Yamin's tweets were picked up by news outlets including ABC, CNN and NBC, thrusting the third-place finsher on "Idol's" season 5 into the spotlight in the hours immediately following the disaster.

"I was on the sixth floor of our hotel ... I was actually tweeting at the time that the earthquake struck," Yamin said in a CNN interview. "It was obviously without warning ... just a very abrupt kind of swaying back and forth. The building was swaying back and forth, as was my room.

"Stuff was starting to fall off of the wall. The light was starting to flicker on and off.

"I stood up and headed towards my doorway ... I was yelling very frantically."

Yamin was staying in Vina del mar, 90 miles outside of Santiago, when the earthquake struck. He had been in town for the Vina del mar International Song Festival.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/americanidol/2010/02/27/2010-02-27_former_american_idol_contestant_elliott_yamin_tweets_from_chile_during_earthquak.html#ixzz0gmD2jCYb