8.8-magnitude quake hits Chile | Hacker News Reader

8.8-magnitude quake hits Chile

us.mobile.reuters.com

101 pointspaulgerhardt32 comments

We live in Santiago and woke at about 3.30am to mild shaking that was growing stronger, so we got out of bed and went to the centre of our flat, where the building is strongest. The shaking was pretty violent, and seemed to go on for a long time (I imagine it feels longer than it is, but I would say at least 30 seconds). The power went out at some point.

When the shaking stopped we found a torch and looked around - books and decorations had fallen down (luckily a large pot of jam had fallen over, but stayed on the kitchen table top). In every room there are cracks in the plaster and flakes on the floor - the corner of the kitchen looks like it may have more serious damage, with a vertical crack where two walls join.

People were going outside, but it wasn't clear to us it was safer (there are many electrical cables in the streets, and we live in a lovely avenue with many old elms - unfortunately they have a habit of dropping branches on people in winds, and at the time we weren't sure how they would be affected, although in retrospect I guess a strong wind is worse than an earthquake for a tree). But from our window we could see one neighbour, with children, drive away - presumably to a relative's house.

We found a radio with batteries, found a station that was broadcasting news, and listened for a while. Some people's phones were still working, as they were calling in, and the general impression was that it wasn't so bad; this morning the news is worse, and I hope the people we know in Concepcion are OK.

Eventually we went back to sleep - there were aftershocks that normally would have been pretty worrying, but that now felt like nothing worth bothering with.

It will be interesting to see how the big, new buildings (often covered in glass) have survived. Just a little way east of here they are constructing what will be the tallest building in South America (the Costanera Centre)...

This is kind-of interesting - I've been looking at the damage in the plaster, and we might have been close to losing an outer, but not load-bearing wall. The building we live in appears to have a "frame" that you can make out by noticing thicker areas in walls; and a central "core". Most of the rest is not load-bearing. So walls are, in a sense, like sheets that join to the frame top and bottom. In the kitchen we have a wall with a thin slit-like window across almost all of the top, and which ends at a corner. I'm not explaining this very well, but perhaps you understand that this wall is only connected to the structural frame at the bottom (the windows at the top separate it from the upper frame). Anyway, it appears to have moved significantly - there are large cracks at either end. :o(

[edit] Bloody hell - and from outside there are major cracks.... Same on each floor. Although - not sure if this is good news or not - it appears from old repairs (that I had not noticed before...) that the same thing had happened in the 1985 quake (the building is from the 60s).

While we have power here, it seems much of the city does not (we've just been out trying to buy food). Many road junctions near us (Providencia, La Reina, Las Condes) are without lights; some bigger buildings have backup generators running.

If anyone is reading this from Chile and is looking for bread, I've got details here - http://www.acooke.org/cute/Earthquake0.html#Sat27Feb20101346...

Thanks for that link! I might need it.

torch = flashlight (for American readers)

flat = apartment; jam = jelly; elms = maples (i think)

Though it's entirely trivial by comparison to your earthquake, for the curious, jam and jelly are used to refer to two very similar but slightly different things in at least some American dialects.

Thanks for commenting, and good luck with repairs and rebuilding.

Unless you use the word to describe a different type of tree than the standard Ulmus minor elm, elms = elms.

I messed up. I meant[1] sycamores, and they do seem to be a kind of maple. Whether they actually are sycamores, or some other kind of maple, I have no idea.

[1] More exactly, I had got the leaves/names mismatched, which is why I was pretty sure it was a maple (because of the Canadian flag). If that makes sense...!

[edit: OK, they're not sycamores either, because the seeds are different. Still trying to work our what they really are.... later: I don't have a clue. I'm not even sure they're maples, because the seeds are this kind of yellow/green dust, not samaras. Sorry!]

[even later, OK, they're called "Platano Oriental" (eastern banana?!). http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platanus_orientalis - translated in the english page as "Oriental Plane", from the Platanaceae family. So not maples at all. And here's a photo that appears to be just outside where we live, to give a picture of Chile that is significantly different from what is on the TV right now http://www.fotolog.com/mis_rincones/41894088 (as I write this, what feels like a V aftershock rocks the building)]

[And el Mercurio - local 'posh' paper - now have photos up. Probably the best collection of photos of the quake, if anyone is still curious - http://www.fotos.emol.com/?G_ID=13635 ]

Hmm, it seems that fortunately the damage, while significant, isn't as catastrophic as one might expect from an earthquake of that magnitude (7th-largest on record, if the 8.8 is confirmed). I don't understand these things too well, but besides Chile's relatively good infrastructure quality, it looks like the depth of the event, and the kind of ground/soil in the region, had something to do with it.

For example, even though this was much stronger than the Haiti earthquake (8.8 v. 7.0), the Mercalli intensities are much lower: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/pager/events/us/2010t... v. http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/pager/events/us/2010r...

Yeah, this is nothing like Haiti, thankfully. It was deeper, further away from major population, and the building codes here are taken seriously (I think you're also right about soil being a problem in Haiti, but I don't know much about that).

In a sense, it's a relief - even if it's the gambler's fallacy - it feels like "ok, that didn't kill us, so we're OK for another few decades" (no disrespect to the people in Concepcion, who have had it much worse - the news is still coming out; when we went back to bed we didn't know it was anything like as bad there as it is now appearing).

If I remember my school geography correctly the type of soil, bed rock and water table massively effects the impact of an earthquake.

It does, certain mixes give properties like a shock absorber, which is the case I'm guessing with Chile. Haiti unfortunately is an island, and most islands by nature are volcanic which usually not only means the bedrock is usually closer to the surface but that it is a much more rigid material.

Bless the building codes. Just read this article a couple days ago in the NY Times:

"Disaster Awaits Cities in Earthquake Zones" http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/25/science/earth/25quake.html...

Hate to think what would have happened (or will happen) if a quake like this hit Istanbul.

Live stream from TV Chile http://www.ustream.tv/channel/tv-de-chile

I was with my brother and we had just arrived at his home when the quake struck. I have to say it felt much more violent than it actually was. The damages seem to be surprisingly fewfor a quake of this magnitude.

I ended up going home at about 5 am as I wasn't able to get through on the phone. Luckily, there were several folks who gave me rides that got me a lot closer, so I didn't have to walk far. The whole city was dark, but I didn't see major signs of damages along the way.

As a HN-worthy note, my wife told me about this before I turned on my computer. She learned about it on Twitter.

When we had that 3-4 quake outside Chicago earlier this month, my wife was convinced a tree had fallen against the house or something. USGS Shakemap had no data yet.

On a hunch I searched twitter and saw over 200 "OMG WHAT WAS THAT?" messages. Confirmed the quake before anything else.

I keep saying, only half-jokingly, Twitter is turning us into nodes of a global collective mind.

When she said that she became aware of the quake, I questioned what did she mean with "she".

I half-joke about it as well. It's a little scary, little exciting that something like this is even possible now.

If only the collective mind could communicate with more than 140 characters at a time...

I doubt organic brains can rely on that many bits when firing their neurons.

Well, sure, but then a real collective mind wouldn't use twitter.

The Boston Globe's Big Picture has a good colleciton of photos from the disaster area.

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/02/earthquake_in_chile...

For anyone looking for missing persons http://chilepersonfinder.appspot.com/?lang=en

Very cool. Great use of GAE's quick deployment/scalability. I assume this is based on a general purpose people finder app?

It's cloned from the http://haiticrisis.appspot.com/. That one was written from scratch in a couple of days after the haiti quake.

Señorita Blanca Alarcon Orellana necesito informacion de esta personas y su familia ella es de PELLUHUE, del sector de LOVELBAN.De parte de Sor Juana Romero Recabal. Mi correo electrónico es (clarinamolina@hotmail.com)

People on Twitter are reporting tsunami warnings in Hawaii. Can anyone there give an update?

http://www.prh.noaa.gov/ptwc/messages/hawaii/2010/hawaii.201...

The general warning: http://www.prh.noaa.gov/ptwc/messages/pacific/2010/pacific.2... The main page: http://www.prh.noaa.gov/ptwc/

At 19:18Z it's predicted to hit New Zealand. That'll be the first word of how dangerous it is at range. About 2 hours later it'll hit Australia and Hawaii. It'll slowly sweep oceana and asia south-to-north after that.

non-mobile version: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61Q0S920100227

Reply on news.ycombinator.com