Word: santiagos
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...Concepción, Chile's President said the government would investigate whether a crucial tsunami-warning system failed to alert residents to the 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...
...total number of troops in the Concepción area will soon reach 7,000. Testimony from evacuees returning to Santiago at the Squadron 10 base suggested that looting had become a serious problem in the region. A team of U.S. officials were dispatched from the embassy to search for American citizens. (See why Chile's earthquake wasn't unexpected...
...amount of vertical movement an earthquake causes at the sea floor. The 9.0-magnitude quake that caused the devastating South Asia tsunami of 2004 yielded potent vertical displacement of about 16 ft. (5 m); Chile's Saturday temblor, centered just off the Pacific coast about midway between the capital, Santiago, and Concepción, is thought to have involved significant vertical motion as well. Fortunately, no other countries in the Pacific Basin were affected by the Chile tsunami. "But it's hard to understand how the Chileans didn't foresee a major tsunami, at least for its own coast...
Ricardo Zapata, a disaster-evaluation chief for the Santiago-based Economic Commission on Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), cites three levels of damage in the Chile quake. The first was the collapse of older, pre-1960 buildings, many of which were further damaged because they were constructed too close to one another. The second was the failure of newer buildings like Concepción's apartment high-rises, which, while not pancaking like poorly built structures did during Haiti's 7.0-magnitude earthquake on Jan. 12, in many cases tilted over and broke, because even the strongest foundations...
...With reporting by Eben Harrell / Santiago...