Chile earthquake updates: The Tsunami killed more people than the 8.8 earthquake

Two waves of 8 feet high struck in Chile

Monday, 01 of Marzo of 2010 21:41

The tsunami that struck the coast of central Chile and the Pacific islands, of which there was no warning in many coastal towns and villages, caused more deaths and missing than the  8.8 degrees earthquake on the early Saturday, and officials fear the death toll to rise as emergency crews are reaching the most remote locations.  Near the mouth of the Maule River, the city of Constitution, 365 kilometers south of Santiago de Chile, seems now a war zone after the tsunami. Minutes after the earthquake, two major waves of about eight feet eachadvanced to the city, one from the south and one from the north.  Both waves crashed violently into the ocean, have witnesses, and like an avalanche, dark liquid emptied over the city and went through the riverbed  from the sea. Two waves fell after and moved eight blocks inland. A wave was 15 feet, witnesses say.  With a thunderous noise, louder than the earthquake, the wall of water was dragging  houses, cars, poles, trees and people in its way. A school, a gas station, truck-trailer: the tsunami engulfed all  like a hungry animal.  A red car in a family fleeing fought the strong current. The driver wanted to go to  the highest areas, the car was stopped for an instant, but was defeated. The water shattered the windows of the car and sucked the family from the inside, says another witness. Today the red sedan is just one of the Constitution remains, which receives silent covering.  MORGUE  The bodies, many of them unidentified are at  the local morgue and are being piled in a gym in  Constitution, by which people come to see if they are  relatives. This is the city with the highest number of casualties, 353, almost half of the total population.  But the missing amount could raise. Orrego The small island, located off Constitution, in the Maule river delta, was covered by the waves. Overver 500 people were camping there waiting to celebratethe "Venetian Night" the end of summer, from which over 150 are missing. "I saw people floating, clinging to some logs that the sea had taken l. Cars floated like fish, "said Marlene Rodriguez.  Wiped  Whole neighborhoods of the city are gone. Full houses were uprooted and were left hundreds of meters away from where they were originally located. A boat is four miles away from the coast. An MP claimed on Monday that it will be necessary to redo the map of Constitucion. Thousands of people stay overnight in the nearby hills in tents , while others try to leave town.  Major was the disaster in the small towns along the central coast, but there is less information, because the authorities have only been able to overfly since  yesterday, the teams were only able to reach some of these places.  Without warning  Among Curanipe and Pelluhue, near the epicenter of the earthquake, Claudia Trucco told a radio that she  was saved while on vacation in a house next to the surf of the ocean, because "my dad always told us to flee to the hills if an earthquake took place ". She was critical of policemen of nearby checkpoints who didn't  warn people, especially tourists, who were supposed to  flee.  "Summer people drowned because they had no knowledge about tsunamis, and did not flee in their cars up. The waves dragged them inside their cars, "said Claudia. When she reached her  Cauquenes home, she found her mother's house in ruins.  Regarding the delay in tsunami warning, Chilean Defense Minister, Francisco Vidal, has conceded that the Navy made a "prediction error" in dismissing the possibility of a tsunami after the earthquake.  Phrase  "Summer people drowned because they had no knowledge about tsunamis, and did not flee in their cars up: Claudia Trucco testified in local radio.  90% of Iloca beach resort was destroyed by four waves , houses moved 400 meters further inland where they were located  The tsunami surprised lawyer Guillermo Carey   in Pichilemu, the main center for surfing in Chile. He came back from the south and was in a light house a few hundred meters from the sea with his wife and four children and the family of a cousin and her three children. Eleven people in total, says the newspaper El Mercurio. After the earthquake they were getting dressed  when suddenly one of them warned that a big wave was coming.  This dragged the house and its eleven occupants  300 meters away and above. After recovery he said  his wife, Florencia was missing and two of his children, Leon and Juanita two years, four years old, swallowed by the water that punched a hole in the house. Florence was found alive, but not the children.  Radio and television stations constantly transmit messages from people looking for their relatives. Most messages are for people who were placed in locations at the passage of the tsunami.  The earthquake revived the specter of 1960, the worst disaster in history  About 50 years ago the strongest earthquake on record took place in Chile, with an intensity of 9.6 on the Richter scale.  Hundreds more died when trapped by the tsunami that destroyed entire villages  Ten minutes later, the sea fell again, dragging the ruins of the coastal towns to be again hit by a wave over 10 meters tall.  Valdivia earthquake. Worse was to happen  While Chile organized assistance to the inhabitants of Conception and nearby cities, a tragedy even worse was to come. At 14:55 on Wednesday, May 22, 1960 there was a maximum magnitude earthquake which reached 9.6 degrees on the Richter scale and lasted about 10 minutes.  Subsequent studies argued that this movement was in fact a succession of more than 37 earthquakes whose epicenters are spread over 1350 km. The cataclysm devastated the entire territory of Chile between Talca and Chiloé, ie, more than 400,000 km ².  Plane crashes and  crew dies  A plane bound for the city of Concepcion to check the status of authorized shelters after the earthquake crashed Saturday in the town of Tome, killing its six occupants, said the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA).  All crew members died, confirmed the commander of the Air Force of Chile, Patricio Ceballos.  The plane, a Piper PA 31 model and registration CC-PGY, departed at noon  and fell in Santiago Tome, 450 km south of Santiago, near Concepcion.  Their crews were going to check the status of authorized shelters after the earthquake of 8.8 degrees that struck Chile on Saturday and left a partial toll of 723 dead.

Chile Navy 'Made Mistake' In Not Warning Of Tsunami

Over 700 people have been killed in the disaster

March 01, 2010

Chile's defense minister says the country's navy made a mistake by not immediately issuing a tsunami warning after the massive earthquake that struck the country on February 27.


Reports say that many of the 708 people who are known to have been killed in the 8.8-magnitude quake were in coastal regions that were overwhelmed by tsunami waves following the temblor.


More than 300 people are reported to have been killed in the fishing village of Constitucion, which was hit by both the quake and the tsunami and there is an increasing number of people reported as disappeared.


Defense Minister Francisco Vidal told reporters on February 28 that the "navy committed an error" in not alerting about a tsunami.


Following the quake, a surge of water raced from Chile across the Pacific, prompting officials in 53 nations to post tsunami warnings.


But the waves proved small as they moved past Hawaii, Australia, and elsewhere and on to Japan and Russia. 


compiled from agency reports

http://www.rferl.org/content/Chile_Navy_Made_Mistake_In_Not_Warning_Of_Tsunami/1970936.html

Why did fewer die in Chile's earthquake than in Haiti's?

By Anthony Reuben  BBC News The death toll from Chile's 8.8 magnitude earthquake looks like being a fraction of the 220,000 people who were killed in Haiti in January. This is despite the Chilean quake being 500 times stronger than the one in Haiti. Clearly, Chile is a more prosperous country, with economic output per head of the population more than 10 times greater than Haiti. That has meant that buildings in general are better built, but Chile was also better prepared. People in Chile knew the safest places to go to when the earthquake struck. Also, since an even stronger earthquake in 1960, Chile has developed a seismic design code for new buildings, which has made them better able to stay standing in an earthquake. One system that helps buildings stay up is called the "strong columns weak beams" system. The idea is that buildings are held up by reinforced concrete columns, which are strengthened by a steel frame. Reinforced concrete beams are joined onto the columns to make floors and the roof. If there is an earthquake, the idea is that the concrete on the beams should break near the end, which dissipates a lot of the energy of the earthquake, but that the steel reinforcement should survive and the columns should stay standing, which means the building will stay upright. The problem is that an 8.8 magnitude earthquake is "towards the top end of what you're designing for", according to Professor Colin Taylor, professor of earthquake engineering at Bristol University. Another advantage for the Chilean quake was that its epicentre was 21 miles (34km) underground, off-shore and 70 miles (115km) from the nearest big city, Concepcion. The energy from earthquakes falls the further away you are from the centre. The Haitian quake on the other hand was only 8 miles (13km) underground and right on the edge of Port-au-Prince. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8543324.stm Unnecessary Comparisons: Haiti and Chile Martha St Jean A New Yorker through and through Posted: March 2, 2010 05:32 PM Upon hearing that an 8.8 magnitude earthquake with an epicenter roughly 70 miles from Chile's second largest city of Concepcion, I began to automatically draw comparisons. We could talk about how the "Chilean quake would likely claim far fewer lives than the one that struck Haiti in early January." We could talk about how much better prepared Chile was for the earthquake, how safety codes required that buildings were constructed to sway with the seismic tremors or we can talk about the resulting consequences in the lives of Chileans. We could talk of the socio-economic differences as this writer expresses in a piece in Time:  ...Chile is more developed because it's doing things right. The same goes for Brazil, Uruguay, Costa Rica and a handful of other Latin American and Caribbean nations that have decided in the 21st century to stop running their societies like medieval fiefdoms. They've conceded that niceties like rule of law, accountability, education, entrepreneurial opportunity and administrative efficiency actually have merit. And they've stopped making worn-out excuses, like the threats of communism or U.S. imperialism, for not modernizing their political and economic systems. The earthquake that struck Chile was 500 times stronger than that which hit Haiti, with a magnitude of 7.0. 220,000 lives were lost in Haiti, a number that is exponentially larger than the 723 and counting lost in Chile. I am not going to compare the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere to that with the highest GDP in Latin America. The vast differences in the physiognomy of the nations allow for a relatively straightforward mapping of the differences of the earthquakes which struck Haiti and Chile. Alternatively, we can focus on how Haitian and Chilean societies have been irrevocably ruptured on the days the earth shook. We can also instead talk about the fact that no disaster preparedness equips one to handle the loss of a loved one, home or even business. Here's what really matters -- people lost their lives, families are grieving; physical, emotional and mental rebuilding need to occur. Let us not quibble over the numbers of lives lost, buildings ruined or the amount of time it will take to reconstruct but stand in solidarity with those who mourn.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/martha-st-jean/unnecessary-comparisons-h_b_482766.html