Factors that Exacerbated or Reduced Impacts of the 27 February 2010 Chile Tsunami

Abstract

The 27 February 2010 Maule earthquake produced a significant tsunami that caused damage along over 600 kilometers of the Chilean coast. At least 124 of the confirmed 525 deaths were attributed to the tsunami. We examine factors that influenced losses from the tsunami. Chile's Servicio Hidrográfico y Oceanográ–fico de la Armada (SHOA) issued a tsunami warning about 11 minutes after the earthquake that was canceled shortly afterwards. Few coastal residents heard the warning or the cancelation due to widespread power outages, and the official warning had little impact on survival. Interviews with coastal residents showed a high level of awareness of natural tsunami warning signs. Coastal residents cited the importance of school and government education programs, tsunami evacuation drills, signs, the media, and informed local officials in their decision to evacuate. There were two notable failures: the vulnerability of transient populations and people in areas with no access to high ground.

Repeated large‐magnitude earthquakes in a tectonically active, low‐strain continental interior: The northern Tien Shan, Kyrgyzstan

“…Long recurrence intervals involving disparate fault arrays on timescales of several 10 3 years can result in obliteration and overprinting of rupture traces, due to postseismic sedimentation, erosion [e.g., Scholz , ], and anthropogenic activity [e.g., Landgraf et al , ], rendering a rigorous determination of fault activity and hazard assessment difficult. As a result, damage and losses are often substantially higher than in plate boundary areas, where the higher frequency of earthquakes generally results in better preparedness [e.g., England and Jackson , ; Dengler et al , ]. This dilemma is furthermore exacerbated by rapid urbanization, growing population, and the concentration of economic values in many continental interiors that have been affected by infrequent earthquakes [e.g., Bilham , ].…”

The quest for wisdom: lessons from 17 tsunamis, 2004–2014

“…In the near field, the individual responses of coastal communities, based on self-evacuation following shaking of clearly exceptional intensity and duration, literally saved hundreds if not thousands of lives. Most of the tsunami fatalities involved individuals who became entrapped while camping on Orrego Island, in the estuary of the Maule River [97,98]. By contrast, the official governmental response was nothing short of inept: the President herself, on advice from the Chief of Staff of the Navy, issued a statement on national television barring any tsunami risk, about the time the first waves were reaching Valparaíso and after they had devastated the epicentral area; no warning was issued for the Juan Fernández Islands, 700 km west of the epicentre, when there would have been time to evacuate the village, later hit by waves running up 15 m, and causing 30 deaths [99].…”