Chile After the Quake

Two weeks before the end of her presidential mandate, Michele Bachelet woke up on Saturday, 27 February, as the earth shook her country with a force 500 times stronger than the earthquake that struck Haiti in January. Buildings across Santiago swayed and even banged together, but did they did not crumble.

Less than 20 minutes after the quake, the ocean swelled and raked away coastal cities, and Concepcion, the city closest to the earthquake epicentre, suffered as yet uncounted damage. Communications systems collapsed, and all was silent until dawn, when thousands of Chileans surveyed their surroundings in disbelief; some looked for loved ones while others stood and stared at the destruction.
 
In the hours following the natural disaster, Chile's president had to make tough decisions, drawing criticism from home and abroad. Yet by most accounts, the earthquake fallout could have been much worse. According to some, the disaster avoided was a testament to the strength of the Chilean people, their democracy and the solidarity it takes to hold people together amidst death, destruction and the long hours of not knowing what tomorrow will bring.
 
As the death toll rises above 800, many believe the final count will double. Many travellers who were camping along the beaches just north of Concepcion have yet to be found. Others remain trapped or buried, and still more on the island of Juan Fernandez, with entire coastal sections swallowed by swollen seas, remain lost.
 
On Saturday morning, when reporters asked the president if Chile would request international aid, Bachelet's first instinct was to decline. But international press largely misquoted the president, according to Jonathan Franklin, a reporter who has covered Chile for over two decades and who spoke to Bachelet in the early hours on Saturday.
 
Bachelet responded that Chile would not ask for international aid until a thorough assessment of the situation had been made so the government could then ask for the aid that it needed. Most of the journalists present that morning, however, only quoted the president on the first half of her answer, leaving the rest recorded but unheeded.
 
"The last thing Chile needs is food," Franklin told ISN Security Watch from Santiago on Saturday via Skype phone. "What they need are satellite phones, mechanical bridges, and water purification systems."

Bachelet was acting like a doctor in triage, sorting out the multiple scenarios and figuring what could be saved. Despite Chile’s heavy military spending, for hours the president was unable to communicate with entire sections of her country. Worse, the Navy still used an antiquated fax system for communications.

The country's most pressing controversy continues to be that the Chilean Navy told residents not to worry about a tsunami, at the same time that US and other international agencies were reporting the strong possibility of such. Much of that argument is moot, given that Chilean authorities were barely able to communicate with their president, never mind alert the entire coastline. Still, critics point out that scores are dead because of the miscommunication.

The Chile ‘that works’

As one of Latin America's strongest democracies and economies, the country by many measures fared well through a natural disaster that would have levelled most capital cities in South America. JP Morgan actually increased its economic growth predictions for 2010 from 5 percent to 5 .5 percent in anticipation of Chile immediately beginning a huge reconstruction project. Chilean Finance Minister Andres Velasco noted that due to fiscal stringency during booming years of high copper prices, the government has over $10 billion in reserves for just such situations.

Chile has among the world’s strictest building code in respect to earthquakes. "All buildings have to be able to resist an earthquake of 9.0," said David Assael, professor of Architecture at the Catholic University in Santiago.

Following a devastating 1960 earthquake in southern Chile (the most powerful ever recorded in human history) the Chilean construction industry became both personally familiar and legally obliged to consider the effects of massive earthquakes.

“All of us here at the earthquake center are applauding the Chilean people for there earthquake codes. We would have expected that an 8.8 earthquake would have done a lot more damage,” Paul Caruso, geophysicist with the National Earthquake Information Center at Golden, Colorado, told ISN Security Watch. “The people in Chile have experience with earthquakes that saved hundreds if not thousands of lives...among the geophysicists here we say ‘Bravo’ because the Chilean people were prepared. The people in Haiti were not.”

Chile’s strong legal requirements are backed up by a fundamentally democratic system of governance that successfully implements and enforces that code. "Not one multiple story building collapsed across Santiago. Many were heavily damaged and some may have to be demolished, but not one pancaked," Franklin said, adding, "this is the Chile that works."
 
The aid and communications gap

Those in and around Concepcion who lost loved ones, however, cared little for building codes on Saturday as they wandered the streets stunned. Then reality struck, and mothers began looking for milk and diapers. Meat, sugar, wheat and other foodstuffs were also needed in a city without electricity, running water, communications or enough police to keep desperate people from looting.

While there were highly publicized incidents of people looting flat screen tvs, the overall tonic was a massive display of solidarity and calmness as looters took what they needed, and in some cases helped one another carry out heavier items. Local television reporters on the scene Saturday afternoon displayed a crowd of people going about their business obtaining necessities the only way they could - by stealing it from local supermarkets.
 
Another dramatic day passed into night with seemingly little to show for the government's relief efforts. International aid remained on hold.

"I [was] shocked how the government [did] not supply water and food immediately after the quake," Alvaro Covarrubias, the director of La Esperanza Estate Winery in Talca, told ISN Security Watch, adding, "how many stamps and signatures do you need to deliver aid?"
 
By Sunday morning, the mayor of Concepcion questioned the government's emergency procedures, telling a live camera feed that supplies still hadn't arrived. Over the next few days, her voice would become one of the most external pagecriticalcall_made.

One repeated criticism focused on an important element for any government in a crisis situation. "There was no official spokesperson to tell us what the government was doing and what action it was taking after the earthquake," Claudio Ramirez, CEO of CR Comunicaciones a PR Firm, told ISN Security Watch. "[Without a spokesperson] rumors contributed to a general sense of misinformation about the looting, the tsunami threats, and the possibility of other earthquakes."
 
As determined looters continued to ransack supermarkets and pharmacies Sunday morning, a few became greedy and opportunistic. Survivors took up external pagearms against roaming banditscall_made, who embarrassed a nation known for public security and honest citizenry. Chile's national police force, known locally as Carabiñeros, patrolled the streets but their number was too few to stop the growing desperation. The police established a curfew on Sunday night, but even with tear gas and guns they were strained to enforce it.

Painful decisions
 
Then Bachelet had to make a external pagedecision that pained hercall_made. Mounting insecurity was a problem, and the police couldn't manage alone. A president who was imprisoned and tortured by Chile's military, and whose father died in prison during the Pinochet regime, decided to call the military to secure the streets. Fortunately, the move was widely supported, and criticized only for the delay it took her to make the decision.
 
Now, nearly a week after the quake, roadways have been established, the airport in Santiago is operating under a limited capacity, and precise international aid has begun to arrive from a number of countries. Looking ahead to 11 March, when Sebastian Pinera assumes office, many Chileans expect him to focus his efforts on reconstruction and to build a Chile better than the one that existed on 26 February, a day before the earthquake. Pinera has said the construction program will consume the first three years of his four-year term. Under the slogan “LevantemosChile” the president-elect is hoping to induce widespread use of twitter, facebook and other social media to communicate with the public.
 
Pinera, who has stated that he wants to be the "president of the reconstruction, not of the earthquake," has been forced to change his message and posture since the earthquake struck. His plans to reduce social spending in favor of promoting job growth along with other capitalist-minded policies have been put on hold since the first moments of Chile's historical earthquake. "Pinera went from capitalist to socialist in 120 brutal seconds," Franklin said.