Wednesday March 31
Best night’s sleep so far – slept right through two aftershocks that everyone else was talking about this morning. Started the day out talking to a woman who lived in Pelluhue and lost her home and her parent’s home to the tsunami. She and her brother became more concerned about tsunamis after the Indian Ocean tsunami. Her brother had made an informal inundation map of the town based on elevation that showed their parents home at risk. The parents didn’t want to leave the area so she moved to a house nearby just to be able to help them if/when a tsunami came. They were a well-prepared family, knew how to evacuate and had plans and where to meet afterwards. The plans worked well on February 27 and all of them survived. Their neighbors didn’t fare as well, refused to evacuate and an older woman and child died. The woman felt a little guilty about surviving and was now trying to organize to community events to improve morale.

Most of the casualties in Pelluhue, like Curanipe, were campers. There was an informal camping area in the lowest area in the center of town. The radio station manager told us about 100 people died, mainly out-of-town visitors. The problem of educating tourists is common to all tsunami-prone areas and may be compounded by business concerns that pointing out the tsunami risk will deter vacationers. Pelluhue had posted tsunami evacuation signs and began holding tsunami evacuation drills after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Two summers ago, the drill coincided with the peak of the tourist season and many tourists were reportedly upset by the drill and left the town. They hadn’t had another drill since then.

We crossed paths with a survey team from the architecture department of the Universidad Catolica de Valparaiso. They were constructing a detailed map of the inundation zone, topography, and noting location and construction type of all the damaged structures. The plan is to develop a velocity model to explain the pattern and type of damage. We arranged to stay in touch electronically.

Next stop Constitución, heavily hit by both the earthquake and the tsunami. In many ways, the city was a remarkable success story. Constitución is a city of about 50,000 with many older brick and adobe buildings did not do very well in the earthquake. Driving through the city one month later was still a challenge because the bricks and debris piled on the roadway. Thanks to Pancho’s skills at contacting people were able to meet with the mayor and the head of education programs in the city.

Almost everyone in Constitución managed to evacuate. The one notable exception was where people were camping on island in the Rio Maule, enjoying the last weekend of summer and wanting a good location for the fireworks. The island, tantalizingly close to the main part of the city, was overrun by the third or fourth surge and swept away over 100 people. The people camping on the island had no high ground, no way to get off, and the eucalyptus trees on the island couldn’t be climbed. The mayor told us that although the city had a high level of tsunami awareness – their planning hadn’t identified all of the vulnerable areas in their evacuation planning and it hadn’t occurred to anyone how vulnerable the island was. We showed him Nick’s evacuation model as an example of an approach to identify problem zones and he was interested. More on what happened on the island at Here and Here.

The island tragedy shouldn’t take away from the remarkable success evacuating the main part of town. About 40,000 people managed to successfully evacuate in the dark in a city filled with rubble and damaged structures. Off of the island, only 4 other people died, and according to the mayor, it was because they refused to leave. The city had a variety of tsunami education programs including evacuation signs, programs in schools, workshops, and drills. But even with successful evacuation, the mayor emphasized two important lessons to incorporate into their future planning. First – many people on feeling the earthquake just ran. They didn’t think to put on shoes or grab jackets. Taking a minute to put on shoes would have saved them time and reduced injuries because the broken glass and rubble was very hard on bare feet. Second, very few people had any plans on how to contact other family members after they had evacuated. In some cases it took 3-4 days for people to re-unite. The mayor also noted the difficulties of engaging the business community. For the last several years, he had been trying to do a drill for the private sector. They had nearly set a date, but then the earthquake happened.

After Constitución, we drove inland and spent the night at a beautiful spot on Lake Vichuquén. Sebastian is a master at finding wonderful places at off season rates.