Searching through the rubble in Ojos del Mar, a tourist destination in the Valparaíso region of Chile that was hit by the quake-triggered tsunami Credit: Fernando Fiedler/IPS

Report
Cracks in the Readiness Plan of the 'Chilean Miracle'
By Daniela Estrada

Chile still lacks experts capable of operating new anti-seismic technologies and the ability to disseminate emergency information among officials and the population.

SANTIAGO, Mar 15 (Tierramérica).- Inadequacies in technical equipment, specialized human resources, institutional coordination, land zoning and citizen awareness were all laid bare by the major earthquake and subsequent tsunami on Feb. 27 in central and southern Chile.

"Unfortunately the bridges of communication between the scientific world and the political decision making world are very fragile and not very clear," Jaime Campos, director of the Montessus de Ballore International Earthquake Research Center, of the University of Chile, told Tierramérica.

"That is one of the major lessons that we must learn," Campos said.

The seismologist, along with other Chilean and foreign scientists, in the early 1990s detected two "seismic gaps" in this South America country of 17 million inhabitants, in which earthquakes of great magnitude could occur due to the interaction of the South American and Nazca tectonic plates, whose border runs through Chilean territory.

The latest publication of data about this was released in 2009.

It is precisely one of these "mature" zones - from the perspective of seismology - that encompassed the central cities of Constitución and Concepción, where the February quake was most intensely felt, reaching 8.8 on the Richter scale.

The temblor triggered a tsunami that swept through several coastal towns in the regions of El Maule and Bío-Bío, located 200 to 500 kilometers south of Santiago, capital of a country that is more accustomed to praise as the most advanced in Latin America in terms of economic and social development.

Following the quake, which claimed 500 lives and left thousands of homes in rubble, mistakes and poor coordination between the Hydrographic and Oceanography Service (SHOA) of the navy and the National Office of Emergencies (ONEMI) meant a delay in issuing a tsunami alert to protect the population.

ONEMI attributed the government's slow response to the breakdown of the communications network resulting from the quake.

"An earthquake of magnitude 8.8 puts any emergency system in extreme tension regarding its ability to react. The damage zone was enormous, nearly 500 kilometers, and severely affected all of the country's communicational support," acknowledged Campos, and pointed out that Chile is among the countries with most seismic activity.

Research by scientific institutions in the United States and Chile indicates that the force of the temblor shifted Concepción more than three meters to the west. The same occurred with Santiago (27.7 centimeters) and the Argentine cities of Mendoza (13.4 cm) and Buenos Aires (2 to 3.9 cm).

Campos said that better technological infrastructure and, especially, a critical mass of scientists could have mitigated the impact of the second strongest earthquake suffered by this country, the first being the 1960 quake that registered 9.5 on the Richter scale in the southern city of Valdivia.

The national Seismological and Volcanic Network, created as part of the bicentennial celebrations this year of independence from the Spanish empire, had planned to begin full operations in 2012. The modernization process of the ONEMI in recent years proved insufficient as well.

"There is a notable lack of experts and specialists" able to operate the new technology that is available and to disseminate their knowledge among decision makers, the educational system and the population, said Campos.

"This is a problem common throughout Latin America, because our countries earmark few resources for the training of that kind of expert human capital," which is expensive and provides few political points in the immediate term, he said.

However, the western portion of South America is very exposed to natural catastrophes like earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis.

In the area of technology, Campos underscored the experience of Japan, which "has a network of sensors throughout its national territory, connected in real time to a strong communication system, which does not collapse as a result of earthquakes."

The information generated by those sensors "is channeled through a central processing point, where in a few seconds it identifies zones where there have been severe ground movements and where the areas of maximum damage are located," he explained.

If Chile had a system like this, it could have meant less time in discovering all of the sites in the country affected by the earthquake and the tsunami.

According to Campos, the information that SHOA utilized, generated by a system of buoys created by the United States in the Pacific Ocean to measure changes in tides, is not the most appropriate for this region.

"Countries of Latin America, like Peru, Ecuador, Colombia and Chile, need a robust system that allows them to detect, using instruments, the strong movements, in order to know quickly which is the zone of maximum damage, and based on that information initiate the pertinent aid to help the people affected," said the seismologist.

Latin America should develop technical capacity and its own experience to create a system that is appropriate for the region's specific problems, Campos said.

According to experts, inadequate urban planning is another problem revealed by the quake.

Although national law requires communities to have regulatory plans that include analysis of at-risk zones, the threat of temblors is not always dealt with by the authorities, the real estate and tourism markets, or the communities themselves, architect Libertad Burgos, of the private consultancy Infracon, told Tierramérica.

"The responsibility is shared" and has to do with the "lack of general awareness" about the extreme degree of vulnerability of the national territory, she said. In 2007, Chile experienced a quake in the northern city of Tocopilla and in 2008 the eruption of Chaitén volcano in the south, which forced an entire city to relocate.

Like Campos, Burgos believes that the emergency network needs much more resources for equipment and especially training.

For Paulina Acevedo, of the non-government Citizen Observatory, the catastrophe "left in evidence two realities: the slowness and lack of coordination of the authorities, and the great social inequality that characterizes this country," because the people most affected were the poorest, who live in precarious homes in zones that don't have the best access routes. Chile does not have "any type of seismic awareness about the geographic characteristics of the territory and what are the best ways to react in an emergency. I'm not just talking about seeking refuge in a doorway, but also storing water and how to handle food in a hygienic way," the activist told Tierramérica.

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