Word: bachelet
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Dates: during 2010-2019
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...fact that they were in the path of an incoming giant wave. In an interview with TIME at Chile's Squadron 10 air force base outside Santiago, where hundreds of troops waited to be shipped to Concepción to combat looting and social unrest, President Michelle Bachelet described how in the hours after the quake, a breakdown in communication in the region may have prevented warnings of a tsunami from reaching vulnerable populations. She said her office was not even aware of the danger of a tsunami until after it had washed ashore in many places. "All the communication...
Further hindering an early warning for residents was a seismic-information system used by Chile's navy that initially provided inaccurate data on the location of the earthquake. Bachelet pledged an evaluation of the system. "There will be a moment in the future when we must evaluate [how our warning system functioned] in detail," she said. "We have a navy [measurement] system that has 19 installations along the coast. The information in the beginning was not exactly from the central point where the epicenter hit. It was thought in the beginning that the epicenter was down in the earth...
Initially, the death toll from the 8.8-magnitude quake was believed to have been caused by falling structures. But Bachelet said that information arriving from the coastal region suggested that the tsunami, which she said arrived 30 to 45 minutes after the quake in most places, was also responsible for the damage. "It was both," she told TIME. "In Juan Fernández, there was no earthquake, just a tsunami. We don't have exact [figures], but we know that people are dead because of the tsunami." (See how Asia recovered from the 2004 tsunami...
...Squadron 10 base, Bachelet met with Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to coordinate the delivery of four Brazilian search-and-rescue units and medical equipment. Air force planes ferried supplies and aid workers to and from the Concepción area. (A plane carrying six aid workers crashed on the way to Concepción, killing all on board, the air force said. The cause of the crash is not yet known...
...Bachelet, a moderate socialist who remains remarkably popular in Chile, hands her office to conservative President-elect Sebastián Piñera on March 11. She is expected to ask U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for a relatively small amount of American aid when Clinton visits Chile on Tuesday during her previously scheduled tour of Latin America this week. Clinton will no doubt praise Bachelet's leadership during the emergency - as most Chileans have, despite the apparent tsunami mishap. It will be up to Piñera to put mechanisms in place to make sure Chile...