Monday March 29
Another aftershock just as I was going to bed but nothing today so far. It was a very busy day of interviews. We are so fortunate to have Sebastian and Pancho in the group. Sebastian knows the kind of information I am looking for and Pancho can track just about anything down. The first interview was with a coastal ecology professor from Valdivia. He has been studying the ecosystems of Chilean coasts for decades and had just finished surveying his lines in February. We were lucky that he had just made it to Concepción in the process of resurveying all of the lines post earthquake. He hasn’t completed the surveys or analyzed the data yet, but his perception is that the land level changes are very irregular with some areas uplifted a couple of meters and others nearby showing little or no change. He was surprised that there were no ecologists on the international survey teams he has met. There’s a real need for this discipline – the changes to ecosystems caused by uplift or subsidence, high velocity water, sand deposition and scour, and the influx of marine waters into estuaries needs to be documented and long term adjustment to the altered circumstances tracked.

Interview two was with two urban planners from Concepción whose responsibility was urban design. They reported that of 996 buildings four stories or higher, seven were damaged so severely as to require demolition and only one had collapsed to the point where people couldn’t walk out of it. Note – this contradicts a report by Peter Yanev who is quoted in the media as saying 20% of Concepcion’s tall buildings were severely damaged. I don’t know where he got his data from but it doesn’t agree with what we’ve seen or heard so far. This is a good time to emphasize the preliminary nature of our observations. Our emphasis isn’t engineering and a number of earthquake engineers have been here – I’m interested in what they have to say. The planners also told us that, like California, designing and planning for earthquakes has long included regulations and well-defined best practices. But tsunamis, in spite of Chile’s relatively high frequency of tsunami events compare to most other countries, have not received similar treatment. There are no prohibitions or regulations on building within inundation zones. The planning dilemma now is how to treat reconstruction of the inundated areas. The coastal land is valuable and there will be pressure to rebuild. There are discussions about permanent relocations of some communities. There is historic precedent – they told us that the relocation of all of Concepción after the 1751 earthquake was in part due to the tsunami damage.

Interview three was with a geospatial analyst responsible for the city housing and other building stock. I have been impressed with the scientific, engineering, and technical capacity of the country. This includes GIS. But while the capability is top notch, not all agencies have embraced its benefits. The earthquake and tsunami may have helped to overcome this resistance as the benefits of tracking the status of structures and reconstruction have become obvious. They are also using geospatial techniques to map the inundation zone using wetness and sand/mud signatures. The analyst was very interested in Nick’s Fairhaven evacuation time GIS modeling project and wanted to explore trying a similar approach in Concepción.

Our last interview was with a Geography professor at the Universidad de Concepción. After the earthquake there was a complete breakdown in communication and civil authority. He described the chaos of the first two days before the military arrived. The military took over most governmental functions including geospatial support for response crews. A problem was that the military wasn’t equipped to map at scales larger than 1:25,000. Our professor had geospatial expertise and past military experience and when he volunteered to help, was quickly put to work assembling an ad hoc team of GIS experts (including our interviewee #3) to provide the needed products. What I found most interesting was his final comment – the need for better education of the decision makers on how to respond to an event that knocks out all of the structural layers they normally depend on. For two days there was no government presence and no decisions made. It was a very hard time to be in Concepción

Tommorrow we leave Concepción and head to Pelluhue. I’m not expecting any internet service for a few days.