Chile was more ready for earthquake than we are . . .

[{~_~} Раиса]

Because our government has decided it's more important to have a
multi-billion$ spy agency than safe infrastructure for our cities.
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The Associated Press - April 2, 2014 3:01 PM

Experts say expertise, luck helped Chile dodge disaster after
magnitude-8.2 earthquake


IQUIQUE, Chile — Hard-won expertise and a big dose of luck helped Chile
escape its latest magnitude-8.2 earthquake with surprisingly little
damage and death.

The country that suffers some of the world’s most powerful quakes has
strict building codes, mandatory evacuations and emergency preparedness
that sets a global example. But Chileans weren’t satisfied Wednesday,
finding much room for improvement. And experts warn that a “seismic gap”
has left northern Chile overdue for a far bigger quake.

Authorities on Wednesday discovered just six reported deaths from the
previous night’s quake. It’s possible that other people were killed in
older structures made of adobe in remote communities that weren’t
immediately accessible, but it’s still a very low toll for such a
powerful shift in the undersea fault that runs along the length of South
America’s Pacific coast.

“How much is it luck? How much is it science? How much is it
preparedness? It is a combination of all of the above. I think what we
just saw here is pure luck. Mostly, it is luck that the tsunami was not
bigger and that it hit a fairly isolated area of Chile,” said Costas
Synolakis, an engineer who directs the Tsunami Research Center at the
University of Southern California.

Chile is one of the world’s most seismic countries and is particularly
prone to tsunamis, because of the way the Nazca tectonic plate plunges
beneath the South American Plate, pushing the towering Andes cordillera
ever higher.

About 2,500 homes were damaged in Alto Hospicio, a poor neighbourhood in
the hills above Iquique, a city of nearly 200,000 people whose coastal
residents joined a mandatory evacuation ahead of a tsunami that rose to
only 2.5 metres. Iquique’s fishermen poked through the aftermath: sunken
and damaged boats that could cost millions of dollars to repair and replace.

Still, as President Michelle Bachelet deployed hundreds of anti-riot
police and soldiers to prevent looting and round up escaped prisoners,
it was clear that the loss of life and property could have been much worse.

The shaking that began at 8:46 p.m. Tuesday also touched off landslides
that blocked roads, knocked out power for thousands, briefly closed
regional airports and started fires that destroyed several businesses.
Some homes made of adobe also were destroyed in Arica, another city
close to the quake’s offshore epicentre.

Shaky cellphone videos taken by people eating dinner show light fixtures
swaying, furniture shaking and people running to safety, pulling their
children under restaurant tables, running for exits and shouting to turn
off natural gas connections.

“Stay calm, stay calm! My daughter, stay calm! No, stay calm, be
careful, cover yourself,” said Vladimir Alejandro Alvarado Lopez as he
recorded himself pushing his family under a table. “Shut the gas ...
It’s still shaking. Let’s go,” he said as he then hustled them outside.

The mandatory evacuation lasted for 10 hours in Iquique and Arica, the
cities closest to the epicentre, and kept 900,000 people out of their
homes along Chile’s 4,000 kilometre coastline. The order to leave was
spread through cellphone text messages and Twitter, and reinforced by
blaring sirens in neighbourhoods where people regularly practice
earthquake drills.

But the system has its shortcomings: the government has yet to install
tsunami warning sirens in parts of Arica, leaving authorities to shout
orders by megaphone. And fewer than 15 per cent of Chileans have
downloaded the smartphone application that can alert them to evacuation
orders.

Alberto Maturana, the former director of Chile’s Emergency Office, said
Chileans were lucky the quake hadn’t caught them in the middle of the
day when parents and children are separated, or in the middle of the night.

And he was highly critical of the government’s response, citing the need
for better access to roads, transportation, health care, co-ordination
and supplies.

Bachelet, who just returned to the presidency three weeks ago, had no
margin for error. The last time she presided over a major quake, days
before the end of her 2006-10 term, her emergency preparedness office
prematurely waved off a tsunami danger. Most of the 500 dead from that
magnitude-8.8 tremor survived the shaking, only to be caught in killer
waves. Some 220,000 homes were destroyed as large parts of many coastal
communities were washed away.

The U.S. Geological Survey said more than 60 significant aftershocks,
including one of magnitude 6.2, followed the Tuesday night quake centred
99 kilometres northwest of Iquique.

And seismologists warn that the same region is long overdue for an even
bigger quake.

“Could be tomorrow, could be in 50 years; we do not know when it’s going
to occur. But the key point here is that this magnitude-8.2 is not the
large earthquake that we were expecting for this area. We’re actually
still expecting potentially an even larger earthquake,” said Mark
Simons, a geophysicist at the California Institute of Technology.