Earthquake Cin CHile: Situation Cooling Down

Latest News From Chile: Chile’s capital is returning to normal as electricity comes online and international flights resume, while residents of towns closer to the Feb. 27 earthquake’s epicenter wait for help to arrive.

The government has distributed 8,200 tons of aid in the two hardest hit regions, President Michelle Bachelet said as she visited the blighted city of Concepcion, where the first supermarket reopened its doors following the temblor yesterday. She defended her government’s reaction to the earthquake, saying “everything humanly possible has been done.” Aftershocks again rattled buildings in Concepcion today.

“This was an earthquake of biblical proportions,” Foreign Affairs Minister Mariano Fernandez said in an interview with television station TVN. “Not even a week has passed and we have reconnected electricity in Concepcion. We’ve set up an air bridge and campaign hospitals and other advances.”

Conditions were more dire in many small communities, especially the coastal villages swamped by a tsunami wave that followed the 8.8-magnitude quake, the world’s fifth strongest in the past century. On a highway outside Constitucion, cars passed a man holding up a handwritten sign reading “Help Please.” A woman stood by a placard saying there are homeless nearby, in need of milk, food and diapers.

The government said at least 800 people died as a result of the earthquake. Residents of apartment buildings near Concepcion’s army base ran out of buildings today as a series of aftershocks, including a magnitude-6.8 temblor, rattled the city.

Sniffer Dogs

Police Corporal Fernando Vejar said he has been working dawn-to-dusk since the day after the quake with a team of six body-sniffing dogs in Constitution, 300 kilometers (190 miles) south of Santiago. He and his team have pulled 12 bodies from the rubble, including a couple and their three-month-old baby.

“We have been working nonstop because we have our hearts in it,” said Vejar, standing next to his tan Labrador, Nico. “I don’t know how many bodies there are out there, but I can tell you there’s a lot. The destruction is unimaginable.

“But we have to keep at it,” he said. “It’s our job, and we won’t stop until we find them all.”

In the port town of Talcahuano near the country’s second- largest city, Concepcion, residents have survived by bartering water, food and fuel among themselves. Johnny Munoz, 29, knocked on the door of a neighbor to find diapers and milk for the youngest of his three children.

‘No Help’

“Here no help has arrived,” said Munoz, shortly after an aftershock shook the wooden houses in the shanty town where he lives above the port. “If we hadn’t organized ourselves in this way we would be in total misery now.”

The port will have to be entirely rebuilt, Public Works Minister Sergio Bitar told Radio BioBio.

In the town, roads are blocked by broken boats and sacks of fishmeal covered in black mud left by the tidal wave. Scavengers could be seen taking radios and other equipment from the remains of abandoned fishing vessels. Soldiers carried rifles to protect stores that were destroyed by the tsunami.

Munoz fears looters that were active in the first days after the quake may return as supplies dwindle.

“Nobody has come near here,” he said. “If help doesn’t arrive, things could get really bad.”

In Santiago, the scene is different. Basic services are running and life is returning to normal. At least 40 international flights arrived in the city yesterday and 28 departed, according to the airport’s Web site. Electricity is on in 94 percent of the city, distributer Chilectra SA said.

Elevators Working

In downtown Santiago, office workers and hotel guests used elevators again after precautionary bans were removed. Businesses, some of which closed early following the quake, remained open through the afternoon.

The stock market rose yesterday for the first time since the quake, advancing 0.9 percent. Three days of declines had made the country’s benchmark index the world’s worst performing equity market.

The peso climbed 0.3 percent to a five-week high versus the dollar yesterday and Scotiabank Chile said it sold $163 million in indexed bonds, the first issue since the quake.

The cost of rebuilding from the quake, Chile’s biggest since 1960, will be “of an enormous, enormous magnitude,” Bachelet said. She told ADN Radio yesterday that reconstruction will take four years.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon is scheduled to meet Bachelet and President-elect Sebastian Pinera today, according to a statement from the UN. His trip includes a visit to Concepcion.

Pinera pledged yesterday to modernize Chile’s emergency- response and early-warning systems after what he said were weaknesses exposed on Feb. 27.

“We don’t just have to rebuild what this earthquake and seaquake destroyed, we need to learn profound lessons so that our country is better prepared,” he said.

Chile Earthquake- Why Less Damage?

Read the following interview with Santiago native Eduardo Kausel, a professor in MIT's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) regarding the reason for less damage to the Chile structure when hit by earthquake recently.

Santiago native Eduardo Kausel, a professor in MIT's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE), is an expert in structural dynamics and earthquake engineering. In an interview with MIT News, Kausel explains why Chile’s stronger earthquake led to less-catastrophic damage than the earthquake that struck Haiti in January. He also explains some of the risks that could be associated with a sizable earthquake in Boston, and why the philosophy behind building codes may be changing.

Q. Even though the 8.8-magnitude earthquake that rocked Chile was 500 times stronger than the 7.0-magnitude earthquake that struck Haiti in January, the scope of damage was significantly less. Describe for us some of the differences between Chile and Haiti that helped limit loss of life and property.

A. Chile possesses an educated middle class and ranks among the most developed nations in South America whereas Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Clearly, there is a strong correlation between poverty and quality of housing and infrastructure. It is this difference more than the proximity of the epicenter of the earthquake that led to massive damage in Haiti.

The most fundamental reason for the difference in damage and casualties is that Chile has been taking into account the effect of earthquakes and designing for them since at least the beginning of the 20th century. Chile's building codes are comparable to those of the United States, Japan, Turkey or Mexico, and rank among the most stringent and demanding. They have to, because strong earthquakes are a fact of life in Chile.

In Haiti, however, virtually no construction is earthquake-proof, not even government buildings or the houses of the affluent. This may relate to the fact that although Haiti is in a seismically active zone, strong earthquakes there are much less frequent than in Chile and have return periods measured in centuries, not decades.

Q. In the U.S., earthquakes tend to be associated with the West Coast, but strong earthquakes have struck the Midwest and Northeast over the last few hundred years. In your view, are these areas of the country prepared to withstand an earthquake of considerable magnitude?

A. Considerable research is being carried out at present on how to make the Midwest safe against earthquakes. Fortunately, paleoseismology seems to suggest that mammoth intra-plate earthquakes such as the four that took place in New Madrid, Missouri, between Dec. 16, 1811 and Feb. 7, 1812, which rank among the strongest in the Midwest in historic times, may be rare — although strong quakes on the order of magnitude 6 or so could be expected to occur sometime this century. Still, the problem is not only technical, but also economical, for any upgrading of the large inventory of old, low-rise, unreinforced masonry structures from Chicago through St. Louis to Memphis would entail enormous costs, which the public would have to weigh against the low risk.

A somewhat different story is that of quakes in the Northeast from Boston to Canada. Although not as strong or frequent as those in California, they may not be so rare either. For example, some strong earthquakes have recently taken place in the Quebec province, but having occurred in largely uninhabited areas, they have been inconsequential. On the other hand, a repeat of the 1755 Cape Ann earthquake some 50 miles to the northeast of Boston could conceivably produce substantial damage to the unreinforced red stone buildings of Back Bay, an area that was reclaimed from the Atlantic Ocean and has very soft ground conditions. But probably the more important risk factor there may be the gas lines embedded in that soft infill soil whose possible rupture could lead to fires.

It is worth keeping in mind that modern high rise buildings in Boston and elsewhere in the East and Midwest are very safe indeed, for they not only account for seismic considerations, but have been designed to resist the enormous overturning forces caused by strong winds or even hurricanes, which are much more frequent than earthquakes in this region.

Q. What can we to do to prevent significant damage in the U.S.? How can building codes and processes be improved further?

A. Over time, all codes continuously evolve, reflecting the lessons learned from past design mistakes, most of which were not a-priori obvious. Until recently, the goal of seismic codes was to protect human life, not the buildings themselves. This philosophy may be gradually changing now. It has been argued that the economic loss to the affected region or nation can be far greater than the aggregate of the physical losses. An example is the massive damage to the port facilities in 1995 by an earthquake in Kobe, Japan, which caused much of that port's shipping commerce to move elsewhere. Societal and economic considerations such as these may begin to affect seismic codes yet to come.

In Chile's case, the various bridges that failed on the highway to the south are not only a loss to the local municipalities or the Chilean highway administration, but the damage to the local economy may vastly exceed the cost of the bridges, which could have been made safer if constructed at a modest additional expense. The stricken area is the heart of the Chilean agriculture, akin to California's San Joaquin Valley. Much of the fruit consumed in winter in the U.S., not to mention the wine, comes from that area. If trucks cannot take these to the ports — many of which where also destroyed — then the produce cannot make it to our markets. Thus, the seismic codes that govern the infrastructure may be in need of upgrading. Expect the fruit and vegetable prices in the U.S. to rise sharply in the weeks ahead.

Chile Earthquake- Donation Raise

Good news for Chilean-After the Chile earthquake on Saturday, cellphone text-message donations raised merely $100,000 in the first four days following the earthquake that rocked South America’s southern coast, which pales in comparison to the $21 million in text-message donations sent to Haiti in half that period.

Whereas $437,500 per hour in text donations poured into Haiti, less than $1,100 per hour has rolled into charities helping in Chile. “Nothing compares to what was raised for Haiti,” says Christian Zimmern, co-founder and vice president of the Washington-based Mobile Giving Foundation, which started in 2007 and channels text-message donations to a handful of vetted Haiti and Chile charities.

In total since the Jan. 12 earthquake hit Haiti’s coast, Americans have donated about $41 million via text messages to the Caribbean island. While American Idol host Ryan Seacrest and former Fugees rap star Wyclef Jean urged Americans to donate $5 and $10 amounts to Haiti relief using their cell phones, Chile isn’t getting the same attention.

“It’s all about promotion,” Mr. Zimmern said in a telephone interview Tuesday. “If you don’t get that message out to viewers, people don’t know. If Ryan Seacrest says something, or MTV is doing something on it with celebrities, that’s when you drive volume.” Tragedies of scale Zimmern says another factor affecting relief is the destruction. While 7.0-magnitiude Haiti earthquake killed an estimated 200,000, the 8.8-magnitude Chile earthquake killed less than 1,000 in one of the richest countries in the Western hemisphere.

“The human tragedy in Haiti was so much greater,” Zimmern says. “I don’t want to minimize the tragedy in Chile, but we’re talking about thousands dead instead of tens of thousands dead.” Moreover, the Chilean government sent out mixed signals when it initially said it would not accept foreign donations. For that reason, the Red Cross – which was one of the primary recipients of mobile phone donations for Haiti relief – held off on launching a text-to-donate campaign for Chlie.
But others have.

Texting “CHILE” to 52000, for example, donates $10 on behalf of the Salvation Army. The Mobile Giving Foundation passes on 100 percent of the donation and cooperating cell phone companies add the amount to the donator’s monthly cell phone bill. Only the receiving foundation – such as the Salvation Army – pays a fee to the processor for the service.

Donors are allowed to give up to $30 per month to any one charity. Following the Haiti earthquake, only 0.25 percent of all donations were later cancelled, which Zimmern said was because those donations were made by a child or on a company cell phone.

Americans give $300 billion annually to charities, Zimmern says, and 20 percent of that is in amounts less than $150. Less than 1 percent of the total is given through text message donations.

“I doubt that it’s donor fatigue,” Zimmern says. “We have 180 million cell phones in the US – 4 or 5 million people were making donations to Haiti. That means a lot of people are still not making a donation.” Other analysts and observers say donor fatigue is hurting Chile relief, however.

Chile Earthquake: Tsunami Alarm Should Be Improved

Latest News Chile Earthquake: A wider network of buoys and better computer models gave forecasters in Hawaii on Saturday a much better picture of the approaching tsunami than they would have had in the past, but they admit that their models were not refined enough to declare whether a full-scale evacuation was really needed.

When a magnitude 8.8 earthquake buckled the ocean floor off Chile on Saturday, there were concerns of a repeat of the 2004 disaster in which a giant earthquake off Indonesia generated a tsunami that killed thousands of people hours later in Sri Lanka and India.

In Hawaii, it was 8:34 p.m. Friday. The magnitude of an earthquake gives an expectation of the size of the resulting tsunami, and with an 8.8 magnitude, the scientists at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center expected a dangerous tsunami.
Coastlines around the Pacific were put on alert, and the beaches in Hawaii were evacuated well in advance of the arrival of the tsunami. But the waves there turned out to be smaller than what was initially expected, causing little or no damage, pointing to the still incomplete knowledge in the art and science of tsunami forecasting.

Charles McCreery, the center’s director, said some early forecasts predicted that waves as high as eight feet could wash into parts of Hawaii. There were direct historical precedents. In 1960, a magnitude 9.5 earthquake off Chile, the largest earthquake ever recorded, generated a tsunami that killed 61 people in Hawaii and more than 100 in Japan. In 1837, a smaller quake, estimated at magnitude 8.5, also generated a deadly tsunami that hit Hawaii with waves as high as 20 feet.

But not all magnitude 8.8 earthquakes generate equally large tsunamis. If the earthquake occurs in shallower water, the uplift of the sea floor would displace less water, setting off a smaller tsunami. The seismic signals provide some clues, but not definitive information. Just five years ago, there would have been no midocean tsunami buoys between Chile and Hawaii, and forecasters would have been left guessing at the size of the waves until they hit.

This time, there was a buoy several hundred miles off Peru that recorded the tsunami as it sped by at more than 400 miles per hour, three hours after the earthquake.
“For this case, we had to pretty much base our forecast on one dot, because of the timing,” said Vasily V. Titov, a researcher at the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle who developed one of the three models used by the warning center. In 2004, there were six tsunami buoys. Now there are 39.

The data from the one buoy was enough for the computer model to figure out that the tsunami was smaller and less destructive. At 6:24 a.m. Saturday in Hawaii, about five hours before the arrival of the tsunami there, the tsunami center put out a bulletin with predictions that the wave might reach four feet at Hilo, where the bay tends to amplify the waves, and much lower elsewhere.“In general, all of the numbers were bigger initially and went down,” Dr. McCreery said. The waves at Hilo were a bit less than three feet.

Dr. Titov said his model predicted the wave heights fairly accurately. This time, there were no deaths, and the tsunami pushed waters, at most, only a few feet above normal. “It looks like we nailed it, at least for U.S. coastlines,” Dr. Titov said.
But officials said the decision to order an evacuation in Hawaii, the first since 1994, was the right one given the uncertainties of the models.

“We’re still in the incipient stages of using these models to constrain our forecasts,” Dr. McCreery said. “There are still lots of improvements we need to make before we can rely on them totally for our decision making.” For one thing, the models do not provide estimates of how far off they might be.

“We had to do what we did, because there was too much uncertainty to say it was safe to not evacuate,” Dr. McCreery said. Dr. Titov agreed. He pointed out that the models indicated that the thrust of the tsunami’s energy passed south of Hawaii. When officials say that Hawaii dodged a bullet, “It’s almost literally true,” Dr. Titov said.

Earthquake Chile-Losses Exceed USD8 Billion

Latest News From Chile: Insured losses from a devastating earthquake in Chile could exceed $8 billion, a level that probably won't have a big impact on reinsurers or the pricing of insurance. Chile's well-developed economy and reliance on private insurance coverage will aid in its recovery, unlike some other emerging markets that have been through devastating natural disasters.

Catastrophe risk modeling firm, Eqecat Inc., estimated that insured losses from the 8.8 magnitude earthquake that hit Chile Saturday could range from $3 billion to $8 billion, or 25% of the total economic losses. The company said the loss represents 15-40% of the estimated insured limits for earthquake coverage. The firm noted that the estimate range is so wide because it was not formed by on-the-ground data and the extent of Chile's infrastructure damage is still unclear.

Eqecat estimates that the economic damage could be about 10% to 15% of Chile's gross domestic product. Chile's GDP was an estimated $244.3 billion in 2009, according to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.

Earlier Monday, AIR Worldwide, another catastrophe risk modeling firm, estimated that insured losses from the earthquake could exceed $2 billion. The total economic losses could be more than $15 billion, the company said Monday. The loss estimate takes into account insured damage to property, business interruption losses and higher prices for cleanup and redevelopment materials, services and labor due to a surge in demand after the catastrophe.

In a research note to clients, Goldman Sachs analyst Alberto Ramos said he expects the earthquake to hurt Chile's GDP in the first of half of this year. "After activity normalizes we should see an extra bounce to activity anchored on the reconstruction effort to rebuild the lost or damaged capital stock of the economy," he wrote.

Ramos added that mining operations in the northern region of the country "seems to have been spared," but two oil refineries were closed due to lack of power supply and apparent structural damage. Chile, the world's largest supplier of copper, "sustained limited direct damage," the Goldman report said.

Saturday's earthquake struck a less populated, more residential area of Chile, which won't lead to heavy insured losses. Macquarie Equities Research doesn't expect significant losses for reinsurers, including Swiss Reinsurance Co. (RUKN.VX), Munich Re AG (MUV2.XE), XL Capital Ltd. (XL) and ACE Group (ACE).

Sometimes losses can lead insurers to increase prices for insurance. But "We do not foresee this as a potential pricing catalyst for the [reinsurance] industry," wrote Macquarie analyst Bill Yankus in a research note.The four reinsurers didn't immediately return calls for comment.

This is the second major earthquake to hit the Western Hemisphere in the past two months. In January, a magnitude-7 earthquake hit Haiti, causing mass devastation in the poverty-stricken country. Haiti was set to receive up to $8 million from its main catastrophe insurer, the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility--a regional fund administered by participating governments.

Chile's insured losses will far exceed that amount because the country has more private insurers, and "the more advanced the economy, the larger the catastrophe losses," said Robert P. Hartwig, an economist and president of the Insurance Information Institute. About 90% of homeowners in Chile have property policies that cover earthquakes, Hartwig said, citing information from Axco, an independent supplier of global insurance market information. By contrast, roughly 12% of homeowners in California, a U.S. state vulnerable to earthquakes, have such coverage.

Chile suffered one of the largest earthquakes in history in 1960, when 1,655 people were killed. Since that time, the country has put much effort into its earthquake preparedness. Hartwig said, "There is an old adage earthquakes don't kill people, buildings kill people in earthquakes. Chile has managed to avoid massive losses of life because of adherence to stringent building [codes] over the past half century."

TSUNAMI Alert in Hawaii

Earthquake in Chile Triigered Tsunami Alert. Three hours after an earthquake struck Chile, a sensor on the ocean floor 205 miles from the epicenter registered the first inkling that a tsunami was traveling across the Pacific toward Hawaii.

As data poured into the Pacific Warning Center of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), scientists calculated how far the tsunami would travel and how powerful it would be when it arrived at the world's coastlines, ultimately issuing a warning for Hawaii and an advisory for the U.S. West Coast.

Hawaii's emergency officials sounded the islands' sirens, rousing the coastal residents and giving them at least 10 hours to evacuate before the most destructive waves would wash ashore.
"We were able to make pretty accurate forecasts," said NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco. "It provided the emergency managers and the public time to respond. People heeded the warning, sought higher ground, and we had no significant direct injuries or damages. That's a significant accomplishment."

The sensor, attached to a buoy, is among the newest tools deployed by the United States since the Dec. 26, 2004, Indian Ocean tsunami, which killed more than 200,000 people in Indonesia, Thailand and Sri Lanka. The killer tsunami, the most powerful in recent memory, prompted a new look at the world's warning systems.

"The Indian Ocean tsunami was a real wake-up call for people," Lubchenco said. After that, the United States accelerated plans for an international warning program by deploying new buoys and increasing staff at two NOAA warning centers, she said.

Tsunami waves occur when the ocean is disturbed, usually by a powerful earthquake. The waves radiate outward from the disturbance and can travel for thousands of miles. The United States established the Pacific Warning Center, its first warning system, in 1949 after a tsunami originating in the Aleutian Islands struck Hawaii, killing 150 people in 1946.

In 1967, the United States established a second center for the West Coast and Alaska. Nearly 60% of the world's tsunamis occur in the Pacific Ocean, NOAA said. After the 2004 tsunami, NOAA ramped up its staffing at the warning centers from eight hours a day to 24 hours, seven days a week, Lubchenco said. Scientists created 43 high-resolution computer models that predict how different tsunamis will behave under varying conditions, she said.

The United States increased the number of tsunami buoys it maintains from six to 39, she said. Australia contributes six buoys and Thailand and Indonesia each maintain one buoy. The Deep-ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunamis buoys monitor the ocean's activity by sending an acoustic signal between a transmitter anchored on the sea floor and a surface buoy.

As the tsunami travels, the sensor reports changes in water pressure that can signal an approaching tsunami and help scientists calculate the size of the waves. Satellites relay the data to warning centers.

On Saturday, the predictions for the tsunami's arrival in Hawaii were off by just an hour, although the waves were weaker than expected. "When you think of how fast it's moving and how much energy is in it, when you consider the tsunami is moving across the ocean at the speed of a jet airplane, this warning system was pretty effective," Lubchenco said.

Documents made public in June by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), a watchdog group in Washington, showed that 10 of the 39 deep-ocean stations operated by the United States were sending sporadic or unusable data, leaving uncovered several critical areas.
PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch said NOAA "acted with some dispatch to reconnect the buoys."

"These buoys are critical. If they are working properly, it gives hours of advance notice to affected populations that a tsunami is on the way," Ruch said. "Those hours could mean the difference between life and death."

A few buoys were out of commission Saturday, Lubchenco said. A NOAA ship travels constantly among the buoys to make repairs, she said.

Earthquake Hit Chile-8.8 Magnitude

News from CNN reported that a massive magnitude 8.8 earthquake struck central Chile early Saturday, rattling bulidings and triggering a tsunami. At least 6 people were killed and the death toll is expected to rise, government officials said.

The epicenter of the earthquake was located near the city of Concepcion, 212 miles (341 kilometers) from the capital of Santiago. The quake struck at 3:34 a.m. (1:34 a.m. ET). Concepcion is Chile's second largest city with a population of 200,000. There are reports of collapsed buildings in Santiago. The quake was felt in several Chilean towns and in parts of Argentina as well.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center issued a tsunami warning for Chile and Peru. A tsunami watch has been issued for Ecuador, Colombia, Panama and Costa Rica. The center recorded a tsunami wave as high as 9 feet.

iReport.com: Did you feel it? Share information, images with CNN. "An earthquake of this size has the potential to generate a destructive tsunami that can strike coastlines near the epicenter within minutes and more distant coastlines within hours," the National Weather Service said in a statement.

Officials hoped to learn more about the devastation in the morning. Santiago resident Leo Perioto jumped out of his bed in his apartment at the top of a six-story building.

"The whole building was shaking," he said. "The windows were wobbling a lot. We could feel the walls moving from side to side."

Alessandro Perez, who is staying at the Santiago Marriott Hotel, reported shattered windows, but there was no structural damage. No one at the hotel was injured, he said. Anita Herrera, who works at the Hotel Kennedy in Santiago, said electricity was knocked out at that hotel and guests were nervous.

"Our hotel is built for this," she said. "In Chile, this happens many times." Chile holds the record for the largest earthquake in the world, according to the USGS. A magnitude 9.5 quake struck the South American country in May 1960 and killed 1,655 people.