CHILE NEEDS TO BE BETTER PREPARED FOR NEXT “TEST“

March 6, 2006

By DIEGO REYES LOPEZ

At this time, people in Chile most affected by the earthquake are slowly recovering from the huge damage from the fifth most powerful earthquake ever recorded. A feeling of hope is starting to be embraced by our nation.



A common saying claims: “It´s easy to be a general after the war.” Nonetheless, some hard-to-believe facts have disappointed me deeply and need to be discussed. After all, there is another saying that states, “We fall to stand up again.”

The first mistake was failure to alert Chileans about the tsunamis. Chile suffered an earthquake of 8.8 magnitude on the Richter scale at 3:34 a.m., and the Navy at 03:51 a.m. alerted the National Office of Emergencies (ONEMI) that a tsunami could come. But the Navy dismissed the alert when President Bachelet called them at 4:56 a.m. Due to this fact, many people lost their lives and many people are missing. The procedure to alert people about tsunamis should be automated and based on information retrieved by instruments in the sea and earth which can automatically alert people near the shores.

One of the reasons these people disregarded the tsunami alert was that they said it was impossible to have a tsunami hours after the earthquake. They believed “huge waves only come right after the earthquake not hours later. Nonetheless, the biggest waves came to the shore at roughly 6 a.m. covering all that they found in their path.

This tragedy showed immediately another vulnerability that I didn´t expect in my beloved developing country: the lack of a reliable system of communications. In an interview to Radio Cooperativa, Bachelet said: “After the earthquake no one answered my calls, so I went directly to the ONEMI.”

Its hard to believe that Chile’s highest official had to wait four precious hours to have at her disposal a helicopter to assess the harm in the south of Chile. In the mine where I work, I could know by radio a few minutes after the earthquake the status of the electrical supply, enabling me to go immediately to recover our power system. The lack of communication between the president and organizations such as the army and the ONEMI brings to light that Chile wasn’t prepared to face a state of
emergency.

In Chile there are not unexpected earthquakes. Our country is located in the joint of the Continental and Nazcar plates. Earthquakes can occur when large plates move and push each other. All Chileans know that every 20 years there is an earthquake that shakes us and tests us again. It’s like a professor that comes every two decades to test our endurance and it´s sad to realize that even when we could have taken advantage of the technology that is available now, we missed the test and we didn´t act quickly and effectively. We could have saved many lives and would have been spared much sorrow.

In the coming months and years, we’ll assess the mistakes of Feb. 27 to correct them and never repeat them. The “demanding professor” will arrive again. I’m sure on the next test we´ll pass the exam.

Diego Reyes Lopez is an electrical engineer at Los Bronces copper mine, Anglo American in Santiago, Chile. He can be reached at diegoreyeslopez@gmail.com.