At least I am alive.
"Devastating quake jolts Chile; Magnitude-8.8 tremor kills at least 300, but tsunami waves spare Hawaii" by Roberto Candia and Eva Vergara, Associated Press | February 28, 2010
A woman sat in front of a quake-damaged house in Talca, Chile. At right, vehicles were scattered along a highway that collapsed near Santiago. (David Lillo/Associated Press)
TALCA, Chile - One of the largest earthquakes ever recorded tore apart houses, bridges, and highways in central Chile yesterday and sent a tsunami racing halfway around the world. Chileans near the epicenter were tossed about as if shaken by a giant, and authorities said at least 300 people were dead.
The magnitude-8.8 quake was felt as far away as Sao Paulo in Brazil - 1,800 miles to the east. The full extent of damage remained unclear as dozens of aftershocks - one nearly as powerful as Haiti’s devastating Jan. 12 earthquake - shuddered across the disaster-prone Andean nation....
Chile’s president, Michelle Bachelet, declared a “state of catastrophe’’ in the central part of the country but said the government had not asked for assistance from other countries. If it does, President Obama said, the United States “will be there.’’
And where are we going to get the money and manpower?
He can't even care for his own country, Haiti is a failure, we have occupations and prospective occupations all over the place, and now this guy wants to help Chile?
Oh, yeah, take a grain of salt with that pledge, Chileans. It's the U.S. making it.
Newly built apartment buildings in Chile slumped and fell. Flames devoured a prison. Millions of people fled into streets darkened by the failure of power lines. The collapse of bridges tossed and crushed cars and trucks, and complicated efforts to reach quake-damaged areas by road.
In Talca, just 65 miles from the epicenter, people sleeping in bed suddenly felt like they were flying through major airplane turbulence as their belongings cascaded around them from the shuddering walls at 3:34 a.m.
A deafening roar rose from the convulsing earth as buildings groaned and clattered. The sound of screams was confused with the crash of plates and windows. Then the earth stilled, silence returned, and a smell of damp dust rose in the streets where stunned survivors took refuge....
The jolt set off a tsunami that swamped San Juan Bautista village on Robinson Crusoe Island off Chile, killing at least five people and leaving 11 missing, said Guillermo de la Masa, head of the government emergency bureau for the Valparaiso region. He said the huge waves also damaged several government buildings on the island.
The surge of water raced across the Pacific, setting off alarm sirens in Hawaii, Polynesia, and Tonga and prompting warnings across all 53 nations ringing the vast ocean. Tsunami waves washed across Hawaii, where little damage was reported....
Related: Tonga Tames Cyclone Rene
About 13 million people live in the area where shaking was strong to severe, according to the US Geological Survey. Robert Williams, a geophysicist with the US Geological Survey, said the Chilean quake was hundreds of times more powerful than Haiti’s magnitude-7 quake, though it was deeper and cost far fewer lives.
More than 50 aftershocks topped magnitude 5, including one of magnitude 6.9....
My nerves are frayed and I'm just sitting here typing. At least I can go outside and walk on earth without worrying if it is going to rumble in the next five minutes.
Good Lord!
The largest earthquake ever recorded struck the same area of Chile on May 22, 1960. The magnitude-9.5 quake killed 1,655 people and left 2 million homeless. It caused a tsunami that killed people in Hawaii, Japan, and the Philippines and caused damage along the West Coast of the United States.
Yesterday’s quake matched a 1906 temblor off the Ecuadorean coast as the seventh-strongest ever recorded in the world....
A tremor also hit northern Argentina, causing a wall to collapse in Salta, killing an 8-year-old boy and injuring two of his friends, police said.The US Geological Survey said the magnitude-6.3 quake was unrelated to Chile’s disaster.
How could it not be? The whole are is shaking itself out.
--more--"
"Chilean-Americans anxiously wait for news on relatives" by Jenna Russell, Globe Staff | February 28, 2010
The earthquake struck in the dead of night, collapsing apartment buildings and bridges, and smashing windows and walkways in the Santiago airport. A state of catastrophe was declared, as the quake triggered towering waves that swept across the Pacific, raising fears in Hawaii of a powerful tsunami.
The Chilean consulate in Boston was flooded yesterday with dozens of calls from area residents seeking news of relatives, said Philip Garber, the Chilean co-consul. About 2,300 Chileans living here are registered with the consulate. Anxiety was high, said Garber, especially among parents of college students, many of whom traveled to Chile this week and last week to begin study-abroad programs.
Phones systems were down throughout Santiago, Chile’s largest city and capital, located some 200 miles north of the earthquake’s epicenter, said Garber....
Garber said worried families could take comfort from Chile’s general preparedness for earthquakes, which are frequent.
Nicole Rojas, a 20-year-old journalism student at Boston University, spent the day worrying about her elderly grandmother, Laura Elsa Zubieta de Rojas, who spends winters at the family home in Vina del Mar, and other family members with her, including her aunt and 14-year-old cousin. Family members outside Chile made contact with them before dawn, but then could not reach them for hours, raising fears about the potent aftershocks that rocked the region. Finally, by early evening, word came that her grandmother, who is almost 90, was safe.
“I was beyond relieved,’’ said Rojas. “Not knowing how she was was really hard.’’
A student reporter for a BU news website, Rojas said it was surreal to hear about the earthquake in Chile after so recently interviewing students whose families were affected by the earthquake in Haiti. Yesterday, she set up a Facebook page for Boston students with Chile connections, Boston Students United for Chile, to allow them to share information.
As rescue workers in Chile began the slow work of identifying the dead and injured, officials thousands of miles away in Hawaii sounded alarms to warn residents of the threatening surf sweeping toward the islands. In the town of Hilo, where a devastating tsunami 50 years ago killed 61 people and destroyed the downtown, waterfront streets were closed yesterday, business owners boarded up windows, and buildings were evacuated.
“A lot of people still remember 1960, and want to be extra cautious,’’ Gloria Chun Hoo, a resident, said by phone. “It’s never been a question of if there will be another one, but when.’’
Related(?): Did a HAARP Chime in Chile?
--more--"Also see: Many in Massachusetts learn relatives in Chile are safe
As Chile becomes more dangerous:
"Deaths, desperation rising in Chile; soldiers ordered in" by Marc Lacey, New York Times | March 1, 2010
LIMA - Amid frantic rescue efforts and isolated outbreaks of looting, the Chilean president yesterday raised the earthquake death toll to 708 and issued a directive that will send soldiers into the streets in the worst-affected area to both keep order and speed the distribution of aid.
After huddling in a crisis meeting with her Cabinet, President Michelle Bachelet called the damage caused by the magnitude-8.8 quake “an emergency unparalleled in the history of Chile’’ and suggested the death toll would probably spiral higher in the days ahead.
Police fired water cannons and tear gas to disperse hundreds of people who forced their way into shuttered shops in the southern city of Concepción, where damage was substantial.
All governments are the same no matter how "people friendly," huh?
But law enforcement authorities, heeding the cries of residents that they lacked food and water, eventually settled on a system that allowed staples to be taken but not televisions and other electronic goods.
Bachelet later announced that the government had reached a deal with supermarket chains to give away food to needy residents. Her aides also called on residents not to horde gas or food, both of which were being bought up in huge amounts by residents fearful of shortages.
She said the government was imposing a curfew from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. in the Concepción region to curb looting. Only security forces and other emergency personnel will be allowed on the streets. Police vehicles with loudspeakers notified civilians of the rule....
The magnitude-8.8 earthquake, one of the strongest in recorded history, left a devastating footprint on a country that knows quakes well.
In Cobquecura, 50 miles to the north of Concepción, state television showed collapsed bridges, crashed buses, and sunken pavement. Residents had fled to the hills, prompting local journalists to declare it a virtual ghost town.
Yeah, I'm stunned by some of the photographs I have seen.
In remote coastal towns, strong waves had obliterated homes, and boats were found on land, parked next to overturned cars. The authorities acknowledged that the damage was spread over such a vast area that they were just beginning to get a handle on it.
Early yesterday, a 6.1-magnitude aftershock, one of more than 100 that have followed the original quake, sent residents scrambling for cover. With the earth still unsettled, many Chileans have opted to camp outside....
Chile is now Haiti, ladies and gentlemen.
Despite ugly images of confrontation between police and residents, federal officials said the traumatized country remained mostly calm....
Yes, because MOST PEOPLE you NEVER READ about or SEE in the newspaper are GOOD PEOPLE -- and that is the WORLD OVER, folks!!
Then again, division and distortion is the name of AmeriKa's MSM game.
The scenes of toppled buildings, overturned cars, and bodies being hauled from rubble resembled those from Haiti a month and a half ago. But because of better building standards and because the epicenter was farther from populated areas, the scale of the damage from Chile’s significantly more powerful earthquake was nowhere near that suffered in Haiti, where more than 200,000 people are believed to have perished.
Still, many Chileans felt lucky to have survived the violent jerking of the earth....
They are.
--more--"Or are they?
"Troops strain to control looting, clashes in Chile; Chaos reported amid rubble in Concepcion; President seeks help from UN" by Jonathan Franklin, Washington Post | March 2, 2010
SANTIAGO, Chile - Security forces struggled to contain looting and clashes in this country’s second-largest city yesterday, as tens of thousands of Chileans who lost their homes in Saturday’s earthquake camped out in the streets and waited for relief.
What happens when the whole world is a Haiti, readers? What then?
More than 10,000 troops have been deployed to patrol the city of Concepción and outlying areas hit hard by the 8.8-magnitude earthquake. But even as the first contingents fanned out on foot and in army tanks, they seemed unable to contain the chaos.
Oh.
In Concepción, looters set fire to a department store and supermarket, sending heavy smoke billowing over the heavily damaged city. Rescue workers continued to dig through the rubble yesterday in an effort to reach survivors inside a 14-story building that toppled during the earthquake....
After initially declining to request foreign aid, President Michelle Bachelet yesterday officially sought assistance from the United Nations.
Good luck with them.
Chilean officials called on the international community to donate temporary bridges, satellite phone equipment, water-purification systems, dialysis machines, and electric generators....
In Washington, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said Chile has also requested a field hospital and water-purification systems.
Chilean officials said yesterday that the death toll has risen to 723.
The State Department estimated that 18,000 US citizens are in Chile, with about 1,000 in the hardest-hit area, but only “two minor injuries’’ have been reported, according to Crowley.
Alicia Barcena, executive secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, said the UN is sending satellite phones to Chile and is prepared to send 30 tons of food and other aid if the government needs it.
The earthquake, one of the largest ever recorded, hit southern Chile at the peak of the summer tourist season. The coastal community of Constitucion, home to 50,000 residents, was packed with tourists for Noche Veneciana, a summer festival, when the ground started to shake. Waves estimated at 30 feet drowned the town.
Residents scoured the wreckage yesterday in search of family members. Offshore, houses bobbed in the surf.
(Blog editor's jaw just dropped to floor)
The scene was more chaotic elsewhere. In San Pedro de la Paz, a city next to Concepcion, looters stripped a clinic clean of medicine and supplies. Chilean National Television said there had been “neighbor versus neighbor’’ fighting in the coastal areas of Coronel and Lota, in Concepción province.
Food shortages were reported in many parts of the country, and electricity outages remained widespread....
And will remain so for weeks if not months if not ever.
How do rebuild from a country-wide catastrophe?
With autumn rains just weeks away, Chilean officials scrambled to organize housing for the estimated 1 million to 2 million Chileans who are now homeless.
Just what they Chileans need.
Also see: After quake, giant wave swallowed port town
