From the World

CHILE / Desolation and Chaos in the Cities

Redazione

mercoledì 10 marzo 2010

Recently, a wave of earthquakes hit a series of countries. The Haiti tragedy was particularly hard, but the subsequent earthquake in Chile was even stronger, joined with a tsunami. Chile is a richer and better organized country compared with Haiti, one of the poorest countries in the world, but the earthquake consequences are still dramatic. We publish below a report by Daniel Silva, an eyewitness of the tragedy, from the days immediately after the earthquake.

Monday, March 1

Three days have passed since the earthquake. The situation has become chaotic in the most affected cities due to the lack of basic services. Meanwhile, the authorities are sending military detachments, water, food and medicines for the most stricken areas. International aid has begun to arrive: Argentina has provided three field hospitals, 54 surgeons, electrical generators and four water treatment facilities. The European Union has donated three million euros.

Media outlets register the fear in cities like Concepcion, Constitucion, Talca and Chillan, where people are attempting to protect their belongings from looters. The most chaotic location, according to records, is Concepcion, the capital of the Eighth Region, where there are reports that some mobs have broken into commercial buildings and even houses in order to steal personal items. Faced with this situation, fear has taken hold of people, even local authorities, specifically the mayor of Concepcion, Jacqueline Van Rysselberghe, who made an urgent appeal to boost the number of soldiers deployed to the zones in order to guarantee safety and see to it that emergency teams can carry out their mission without added difficulties.

There are reports that there have been escapes from some penitentiaries in the earthquake zone, which greatly increases fear and forces the population to take individual measures to protect its belongings or what remains of them.

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In Conception, the only means of information is one radio station, the only one which could keep its installations working after the quake. Thanks to it, people are able to find out necessary information in the city: shipments of food items, curfew hours, as well as what is happening in the rest of the country. It has also been instrumental in allowing family members spread across the country to call in asking for information about their loved ones. In this regard, all media outlets have been put to use for providing information through television, websites, radios and social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

And the greatest catastrophe may yet to be seen… Coastal cities and towns were hit doubly hard by nature’s violence: first the earthquake and then the tsunami. There are localities such as Peyuhue, Constitucion, Dichato, among others, where the sea swept away more than 50 percent of the cities (in some cases more). Thanks to the culture of earthquake preparedness that exists in Chile, many lives were saved. In numerous cases, the inhabitants, in spite of darkness and fear, ran or took whatever transportation available to high ground in order to avoid being caught up in the gigantic waves that crashed inland, just minutes after the quake. Due to the difficulty of land, sea or air access to the most affected coastal areas, no aid has yet arrived. At the same time, however, a catastrophic loss of human life has been avoided, as well as sizeable economic losses. This will certainly be talked about in the next few days.

The only hope is that the authorities can provide basic services and military personnel in order to maintain order and security in the most affected areas, where lack of shelter, helplessness, fear and sadness are having an overwhelming effect on the survivors of this natural disaster.

(Daniel Silva)