"Chile battles to prevent disease; Trash removal, clean water on priority list" by Michael Warren and Eva Vergara, Associated Press | March 6, 2010
Residents waited on the street yesterday after a 6.8-magnitude aftershock in Talcahuano, Chile. Doctors report increasing cases of diarrhea among people drinking unclean water and worry that huge piles of garbage have become nests of infection. (Evaristo Sa/ AFP/ Getty Images)
Yeah, the aftershocks continue.
CONCEPCION, Chile - A hepatitis and tetanus vaccination campaign was launched yesterday and doctors warned of outbreaks of diarrhea and infection among thousands of people displaced by the earthquake and the tsunami that heavily damaged or destroyed 36 hospitals and made garbage dumps of coastal towns and cities.
With many pharmacies looted, people suffering from diabetes, hypertension, and psychological illnesses are going without medicine.
Doctors report increasing cases of diarrhea among people drinking unclean water and worry that huge piles of garbage and tons of rotting fish and other debris along the coast have become nests of infection. A growing number of patients are getting injured as they wade through the mess.
“We are going to keep needing water, electric systems, a functioning sewage system. We need to clean up rotting fish in the streets. We need chemical toilets, and when it starts raining, people living in tents are going to get wet and sick. All this is going to cause infections,’’ said Talcahuano Mayor Gaston Saavedra, whose port city was heavily damaged by the Feb. 27 quake and tsunami.
Chile said more than a dozen of its own military and civilian field hospitals were operating yesterday.
They should be: Military Helps Itself in Chile
Mobile hospitals from a half-dozen other countries also were opening or about to open - an unusual situation for a country that proudly sends rescue and relief teams to the world’s trouble spots. But most of the foreign units weren’t treating anyone a week after the disaster.
Just like in forgotten Haiti.
Chile insisted donor nations first figure out how to coordinate with Chile’s advanced, if wounded, public health system. A Peruvian field hospital opened in Concepcion on Thursday with three operating rooms and 28 beds. But surgeons, trauma specialists and stood with their arms crossed yesterday, waiting for patients to be sent by local health officials.
It is the SAME STORY in EVERY DISASTER!
Global government has FAILED, world!
They CAN'T EVEN CARE for DISASTER VICTIMS!!
Luis Ojeda, a Spanish doctor working with Doctors Without Borders, said his team arrived Monday but was still waiting for Chile’s instructions on where to deploy....
Chile signed an operating agreement for a US field hospital yesterday, enabling 57 US military personnel to work side by side with civilian Chilean doctors in coming days to support a population of 3,000 in the town of Angol. Two US Air National Guard C-130 transport planes were en route to Chile to help deliver supplies.
Aaaaah, U.S. finally has TROOPS on the GROUND!!!
In Rancagua, a Cuban field hospital was fully operational. Related: Globe's Cuban Cigar Coverage
Yeah, wouldn't want to highlight Cuban health care except in the worst way, 'eh, Glob?
Chile’s health ministry said that there had been no outbreaks of dysentery or other communicable diseases and that it has enough tetanus and hepatitis vaccinations for the disaster zone.
Field hospitals being provided by Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Peru, Spain, and the United States are meant to relieve 36 heavily damaged or destroyed Chilean hospitals, including Santiago’s now-closed 522-bed Felix Bulnes Hospital.
Powerful aftershocks yesterday forced the evacuation of an older wing of Concepcion’s five-story regional hospital.
The most powerful aftershock in six days sent terrified Chileans fleeing into the streets and forced doctors to evacuate some patients from the regional hospital. The magnitude-6.6 shock at 8:47 a.m. rattled buildings for nearly a minute and sent office chairs spilling from an exposed upper floor of a badly damaged 22-story office building.
Just what they need for jangled nerves, 'eh?
Patients struggled to find medicines and fill prescriptions because pharmacies were looted earlier in the week and power outages still affected businesses and clinics. More than 100 people lined up outside one of Concepcion’s few open drug stores. Soldiers stood guard nearby.
Yeah, the military took care of that:
"Looters give up stolen goods in Chile; Police tactics pay off; president vows to prosecute" by Eva Vergara, Associated Press | March 8, 2010
Girls played near a boat sitting in the middle of a street in Talcahuano, Chile, 10 days after the 8.8-magnitude earthquake struck. Chileans were shocked by the looting that followed. (Silvia Izquierdo/ Associated Press)
The photo encompasses what it is all about for me.
Those little people are what provide the light of life, readers, no matter where they are found.
CONCEPCION, Chile - The police came with bullhorns to impoverished neighborhoods near the epicenter of Chile’s devastating earthquake, warning looters to return what they stole or face police raids.
Of course, it is OKAY for the AUTHORITIES to LOOT SUPPLIES by sending them to themselves.
And so they did, depositing everything from mattresses to refrigerators and flat-screen TVs. It took 35 truckloads to recover it all. Together with looted merchandise recovered by police, the material is worth nearly $2 million, officers said.
Touring a police gymnasium full of the recovered goods yesterday, President Michelle Bachelet called the looting one of “the other aftershocks of this tragic earthquake,’’ and vowed that those responsible would feel the full weight of the law: prison terms of two to five years....
Thousands of quake survivors participated in the looting, which began only hours after the devastating earthquake and grew to include grandmothers and small children. Outnumbered police could only stand and watch, urging people to take only the food they needed, until soldiers arrived and restored order.
The looting hampered rescue and recovery efforts by distracting firefighters and police and deeply wounded the national pride of Chileans who yearn to be considered part of the first world.
Some excuse the looting as a natural result of the yawning wealth gap in Chile, where the poor are exposed to expensive consumer goods without any ability to buy them. The top 20 percent of wage earners make an average of $3,200 a month, compared with $340 a month for the bottom 20 percent, according to the national statistics institute.
What? In the South American success story?
See: Earthquake Exposes Chasms in Chilean Society
Yeah, ALL GOVERNMENTS are the SAME, readers.
They WORK for the ELITES of the SOCIETY, not you!
Police Lieutenant Oscar Llanten credited the return of more than 950 items to teamwork between police and members of the looters’ own communities, who tipped off officers. The items included dozens of stoves, refrigerators, chairs and sofas, mattresses, bicycles, plastic toys, televisions and a copying machine.
A poll released yesterday suggested that 85 percent of Chileans want the looters prosecuted.
The poll published by the daily newspaper El Mercurio also found 72 percent believe the government responded late and inefficiently to reestablish order after the earthquake, and 48 percent believe it was because Bachelet did not want to end her term sending soldiers into the streets.
Sixty percent also believe aid delivery has been too slow and inefficient according to the survey of 600 adults in Santiago.
Bachelet did wait 33 hours after declaring a “state of catastrophe’’ before putting the military in charge of the disaster response, and significant aid didn’t reach some hard-hit communities for two or three days after the 8.8-magnitude earthquake.
But the government has since rolled out a massive effort, deploying planes, ships, helicopters, trucks, heavy equipment, and thousands of troops to deliver tons of aid from government storehouses, Chilean businesses, foreign governments, and aid groups.
Yeah, and they have DELIVERED IT to THEMSELVES!!!
Over the weekend, workers demolished a fallen 15-story apartment building in Concepcion that had come to symbolize the earthquake after officials said there was no more hope for finding survivors inside.
The only known remaining victim not recovered from the Alto Rio building was 21-year-old Jose Luis Leon, whose father on Saturday shouted desperately into holes in the concrete cut by rescuers. There was no answer.Related: Sunday Globe Censorship: Chilean Aftershocks
Yeah, I've kind of had it with that old hat, too.
--more--"
And does the Glob stay on top of this historic calamity?
Nope. And a brief in the B0section to boot.
"Pioneering Mass. robot lost at sea off Chile coast
A pioneering deep-sea robot made by Massachusetts researchers has been lost off the coast of Chile.
Are you effin' kidding me?
Researchers abruptly lost contact with the $1.1 million robot Friday after it reached the Pacific Ocean floor, nearly 2 miles down. Scientists believe a glass sphere that helped keep the robot buoyant may have imploded under the water pressure, destroying onboard communications. It was the robot's 222nd research dive. The robot was known as ABE. It was made at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on Cape Cod and was launched in 1995. ABE had greater range and technical abilities than human-occupied submersibles or vehicles connected by cables to surface ships. It was the first autonomous robot to make detailed maps of mid-ocean ridges and locate hydrothermal vents, where hot liquid spews from the ocean floor.
Interesting considering what has happened there, no?
Making maps for who? HAARP?
--more--"
Sticking with the every-other-day pattern:
"More earthquakes rock Chile as new president takes helm" by Michael Warren, Associated Press | March 12, 2010
Residents in Valparaiso, Chile, who waited to watch the inauguration of President Sebastian Pinera yesterday, ran as a strong quake shook the area just before the ceremony’s start. (Patricio Valenzuela/Reuters)
SANTIAGO, Chile — The earth shook and shook yesterday as dignitaries walked in for the swearing-in of Sebastián Piñera as Chile’s president. It shook some more as they waited for him to join them.
Welcome aboard! Is it what you dreamed of when you won?
Related: Chileans Cheer Return of Pinochet
That is what I think of that election.
People in the balconies of the vast congressional hall in coastal Valparaiso shouted warnings as a massive light fixture rocked overhead, and heads of state nervously eyed the ceiling. But a steely calm prevailed, especially from Piñera himself as he strode in smiling.
The president and his ministers then quickly swore their oaths, and the audience of 2,000 headed for the exits and the hills, joining an evacuation called out of concern that yesterday’s repeated aftershocks would set off another tsunami.
But it was steely calm. Pfft!
Inauguration Day in Chile was peppered with more than a dozen significant aftershocks that damaged some towns and sent thousands running for safety.
These are DAILY OCCURRENCES that the Glob can't feel or hear, huh?
While I get crap from the region served to me.
The day amply demonstrated Piñera’s challenges in leading Chile’s recovery from last month’s magnitude-8.8 quake, one of the biggest in modern history.
Like I give a f*** about HIS PROBLEMS!
Chile’s first elected right-wing president in 52 years won the office by promising to improve the economy. Now, he says he’ll be Chile’s “reconstruction president.’’
The George Bush of Chile, 'eh?
His advice to his citizens: “Let’s dry our tears and put our hands to work.’’
But relief efforts stalled yesterday as more than 10 earthquakes shook Chile in a span of six hours. The strongest, at 6.9, nearly matched the 7.0-magnitude quake that devastated Haiti on Jan. 12.
A BIT UNDER-REPORTED, wouldn't you say, readers?
Piñera said that there were no reports of more deaths, but that Chile’s key north-south highway suffered more damage in the inland city of Rancagua. Violent waves hit at least two towns along the central Chilean coast, Pichilemu and Bucalemu, according to Interior Minister Rodrigo Hinzpeter.
The area around the congress building had already been evacuated when Piñera’s half-hour inauguration finished and the announcer urged the audience to empty the building.
In his first remarks as president, Piñera urged citizens to also heed the Chilean Navy’s tsunami warning and seek higher ground. Then he made a show of normality, greeting other presidents for a shortened lunch at the Cerro Castillo summer palace before boarding a helicopter for disaster areas to the south.
Yeah, he is still eating while rotted fish collects in the streets and Chileans starve.
Piñera called on Chileans to dedicate themselves to “this colossal job of reconstructing our country, of rebuilding better than what we had before, not just to lift up our schools, our hospitals, our homes, but also to make them better, and also to lift up the soul of our country.’
What you realize is the earthquake shattered Chile back to the stone age.
Why it is being covered up by the MSM is up for you to decide, readers.
--more --"
"700 died in quake, tsunami, Chile says" by Associated Press | March 17, 2010
A woman swept the floor of her home in Retiro, Chile, on Monday. The quake caused nearly $30 billion in damage. (Martin Mejia/Associated Press)
SANTIAGO, Chile — The earthquake and tsunami that struck Chile last month killed 700 people and caused nearly $30 billion in damage, according to the government.
Has to be a low-ball figure.
And the ground hasn’t stopped shaking.
A magnitude-6.7 aftershock rocked south-central Chile on Monday night, adding to the raw nerves and mounting damage caused by the Feb. 27 quake.
So no rebuilding yet.
Chile’s interior minister, Rodrigo Hinzpeter estimated that the damage could reach nearly $30 billion, with insurance covering just $5 billion to $8 billion.
Public Works Minister Hernan de Solminihac said it will cost some $1.46 billion to restore public infrastructure.
Higher taxes on mining operations may be one way to cover the public costs, Hinzpeter said. Conservative lawmakers have rejected the idea of a higher tax burden on the country’s crucial mining sector.
Chile’s center-left coalition is demanding greater efforts to help the millions of Chileans affected by the catastrophe.--more--"
Who knows when the Glob will decide to print another item about Chile.
