Chile’s President, Michelle Bachelet, has called for calm in the aftermath of the massive earthquake which struck Chile and warned armed looters that the full force of the law will be applied against them. Curfews were imposed in four cities 2 March, including the hardest-hit second city, Concepción, which is under an 18-hour curfew.
The government sent 7,000 additional troops to maintain order, in addition to the 10,000 already in place who are helping to restore order and with rescue efforts. About half a million people are homeless in Concepción and are more terrified of crime than of aftershocks.
Officials admitted the government had underestimated the dangers from tsunamis following the earthquake and is only now gauging the extent of the damage to coastal areas, the site of massive destruction and most of the almost 800 reported deaths. The stretch of coast 500 km north and south of the 8.8-maginitude earthquake’s epicentre was particularly affected.
The death toll from the 27 February earthquake in Chile has doubled to over 700, according to the country’s president, Michelle Bachelet, and the number is expected to keep rising. The airport in the capital, Santiago, has reopened, but the country is struggling to cope with disrupted transport, food shortages in hardest hit areas and looting.
Links to other sites: BBC, CS Monitor
Chile has been shaken by a midnight (06:34 GMT) earthquake that measured 8.8 on the Richter scale, say geologists in the US and China, who have upgraded their measurements of it. The earthquake was 1,000 times more powerful than the one that struck Haiti in January, experts said on CNN. The quake hit central Chile, 100km north of the city of Concepcion, and 350 from Santiago, the capital. The Chinese Earthquake Administration says it occurred at and “the epicenter was 35.8 degrees south latitude and 72.7 degrees west longitude, with a depth of 33 kilometers.” Sixty-four people are reported dead but numbers are expected to rise.
The airport in Santiago, which was was shaken for 90 minutes, is closed until further notice and according to the BBC, “Tsunami warnings have been issued for Hawaii, Australia, New Zealand and Pacific island nations. Alerts were also earlier issued for Antarctica and Central America.”
Reuters updates and background
Links to other sites: BBC, New York Times, Sydney Morning Herald, Xinhua
Haiti held an official day of mourning Friday 12 February, one month after the 36-second earthquake that killed over 200,000 people and devastated the nation.
Links to other sites: CBC, CNN, Jamaica Observer
It will take Haiti a decade to rebuild, says engineers testing buildings in the country badly damaged by a 12 January earthquake. The UN has estimated that 20 percent of the buildings collapsed and 80 percent of those remaining are damaged. Volunteer engineers who are checking the buildings one by one say that many are too safe to be left standing, reports NPR.
Homeless Haitians, post-earthquake, have set up tents on a golf course (photo: ©2010 Marco Dormino/UN)
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in Geneva Tuesday 9 February made an urgent plea for another kind of aid for Haiti: weather services. The organization points out that “the rainy season with flood risk is due in early April and the hurricane season begins in early June. In order to prevent potential disasters related to natural hazards, which the country is prone to, the capacity of Haiti to produce and disseminate weather information and warnings needs to be developed without delay.”
More than 90 percent of the disasters in Haiti “are linked to frequently occurring meteorological, hydrological and climate-related hazards,” says the WMO.
The country’s meteorological services have operated only partially since the 12 January earthquake, so other WMO member countries have been providing weather information.
A 5.9 earthquake in Haiti Wednesday 20 January, the largest to date, frightened people but does not appear to have caused major damage. An earthquake of 6 would be one-tenth the strength of the one that hit the country 12 January, since the Richter scale is a base-10 logarithmic calculation. Supplies are reportedly finally moving, although still slowly, aid agencies report.
Links to other sites: CNN, Reuters AlertNet
Haitian Red Cross volunteer with child (image: IFRC on flickr)
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Several Geneva-based organizations have rushed to help Haitians following the 12 January earthquake there, and they are now publishing striking images that show the scope of the disaster the work they are involved in.
Among them:
- Doctors Without Borders
- ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross)
- IFRC (International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies)
- OCHA (UN disaster relief coordinating office)
Tens and possibly hundreds of thousands of lives may have been lost in the Haiti earthquake late Tuesday 12 January, the United Nations says, but with no official disaster recovery programme underway, measuring the damage and counting the missing from the population of two million is at best difficult. The Roman Catholic archbishop is dead and the senior UN envoy is missing. Medecins Sans Frontiers, which employs 800 people in Haiti, says its three emergency centres were badly damaged and doctors, who are able to provide only first aid, are overwhelmed with trauma patients. Humanitarian agencies and governments are gathering information with diffculty, given broken communications and the scale of the damage, but supplies have begun to arrive in Port-au-Prince, the capital that was badly damaged by the 7.0 earthquake.
Links to other sites: The Globe & Mail, Miami Herald, Medecins Sans Frontiers, Reuters AlertNet, list of major companies pledging aid, updated “snapshot” list of devastation, Times, UK
A major earthquake, 7.0 on the Richter scale, struck Haiti early Tuesday evening, trapping thousands under collapsed buildings, and killing an undetermined number of people. The earthquake hit only 16 km from the capital Port-au-Prince and has been followed by numerous tremors since the main one. The five-story United Nations building collapsed, trapping employees, says the UN, and the presidential palace was reportedly also destroyed. Communication is limited but several countries immediately said they would send emergency teams, food, water and other supplies. Haiti is one of the world’s poorest countries, and has long suffered from a mix of poverty and political instability.
Links to other sites: Al Jazeera, BBC, CNN, Guardian, NPR, Xinhua
An earthquake of magnitude 5.6 shook the provinces of Salta and Jujuy in Argentina’s northwest, early 6 November. The epicentre was 165 km northeast of the capital of Salta, in the Serranía de la Mesada near the border with Bolivia. Reports of injuries and damage were not immediately available, according to the national Earthquake Prevention Institute, Inpres.
Churches in Samoa were packed Sunday with mourners remembering the more than 170 people who died in the tsunami that swept in following an 8.3 earthquake 29 September. About half of those who died are expected to be buried in mass graves. Entire villages were wiped out by the massive wave.
Assistance from around the world is arriving in the western city of Padang, Sumatra in Indonesia as time runs out for the thousands of people believed still trapped underneath buildings and houses after a 7.6-magnitude earthquake struck 30 September. The official death toll exceeds 1,100 according to UN Humanitarian Affairs chief, John Holmes. Rescue efforts are underway at a school that collapsed with 60 school children inside.
Rescue efforts in this city of almost 1 million people and surrounding areas are hampered by rubble in the streets and broken communications and power lines. Dazed and stunned people wander the streets looking for loved ones. Staff at hospitals are working overtime and the city’s morgues are full. CNN, Jakarta Post, Reuters
Cyclones, floods, tsunamis in Asia, and late today it’s an earthquake in Indonesia that may have killed hundreds of people, the government there says of the most recent disaster to strike. Sumatra was hit by a 7.6 earthquake centred 50 km off its coast, and 75 people are known to have died but hundreds are trapped under rubble. Flights to Padang have been canceled and the electricity and most telecommunications are out in the area, increasing the difficulty of rescue work. BBC, Guardian, UK, Jakarta Post
A tsunami washed over the Southern Pacific islands of Samoa early 30 September leaving at least a hundred people dead and many more injured. Six-metre high waves flooded up to 1.5 km inland, washing away entire villages in low-lying areas on both of the main islands of Samoa and American Samoa, a US dependency. The tsunami was triggered by an earthquake measuring 8.3 on the Richter scale about 30 km underground and only 190km off the coast. A tsunami warning went out immediately but officials said there was practically no time to heed the warning. BBC, Reuters
In the Philippines, hundreds of thousands of exhausted survivors from the weekend’s torrential rains and floods have swamped shelters in churches, schools and gymnasiums. Relief officials say they cannot keep up. Agriculture ministry officials estimated that tropical storm Ketsana, known as Ondoy in the Philippines, had destroyed more than $60 million worth of income-generating crops. The storm has continued moving west, causing death and destruction in Vietnam and Cambodia. BBC, Manila Times
Forty-six people are dead but the death toll is expected to rise as survivors desperately try to reach people trapped under buildings, following a 7.0 earthquake that struck West Java in Indonesia Wednesday. The strong quake shook buildings in the capital, Jakarta, sending people into the streets. Reuters, Sydney Morning Herald
A strong earthquake measuring 6.7 on the Richter scale shook eastern parts of Taiwan and Japan’s southernmost Ryukyu islands early Monday morning 17 August. No immediate injuries were reported. Taiwan is still suffering the aftermath of typhoon Murakot, which dumped 2.5 metres of water on the island nine days ago and caused flooding and mudslides that may have killed more than 500 people. CNN, Reuters
[Video] A strong earthquake measuring 6.5 on the Richter scale shook the Tokyo, Japan area early Tuesday 11 August. Some people were injured, none seriously, but train service was interrupted and highways were closed for inspection. Authorities shut down two reactors at a nuclear power plant. The earthquake triggered a landslide which blocked part of a highway. Heavy rains over the past days caused authorities to warn people of further landslides.
Half a continent away in the Indian Ocean, a tsunami alert was called after a 7.6 magnitude earthquake struck north of Port Blair, Andaman Islands. The warning was cancelled a few hours later. BBC, CNN
Leaders from some of the world’s most important nations agreed at their annual G8 meeting in Italy to limit by 2050 the increase in global ambient temperature to just two degrees C° above levels 150 years ago. They also committed to reduce their countries’ carbon emissions by 50-80 percent by 2050. Any meaningful agreement needs the cooperation of both India and China, whose growing economies are major contributors to the world’s carbon emissions. US President Barack Obama chairs the G8 meeting on climate today 9 July. The feeble world economy was on the agenda Wednesday. The three-day meeting is being held in the Italian town of L’Aquila, which was largely destroyed by an earthquake in April, and is still suffering from aftershocks. Many residents are still living in tents. BBC, CNN, Reuters
Images, Aquila Italy in May 2009: © 2009 G Tosi/Orderofmalta.org
An earthquake measuring 7.1 on the Richter scale struck near the Gulf island of Roatan early in the morning 28 May, causing six deaths and extensive damage in towns on the Northern coast of Honduras and the Gulf islands. It was followed a half-hour later by a 4.8 magnitude aftershock. In El Progreso, a section of a bridge across the Ulua River collapsed.
The government of Honduras says that a meeting of the Organization of American States (OAS) which it is hosting 2 and 3 June in San Pedro Sula will go ahead. CNN, El Heraldo (Spa), La Prensa (Spa)
By students at Collège Voltaire, Geneva
Abruzzo, Italy, May 2009 (photo, Gabriele Tosi, Order of Malta, reproduced with permission)
Although the Swiss Red Cross has already sent help to the victims of the Italian earthquake that devastated the town of Aquila in Abruzzo, Italy 6 April 2009, Italy still needs donations. The Swiss association sent 200 tents and CHF 300,000.
Afghanistan was struck Thursday by two moderate earthquakes that killed at least 19 people, about 50 km east of Kabul, near the border with Pakistan. BBC
Italy on Good Friday before Easter, an important day in the Catholic Church which plays a significant part in Italian life, is mourning the nearly 300 victims of the earthquake that rocked the town of Aquila 6 April. At least 150 people are being buried Friday, with dignitaries and officials from throughout Italy attending, reports the BBC.
The Italian government now says that 207 bodies have been found and another 50 people are reported missing, but 1,500 are injured and 17,000 are homeless after the earthquake that hit Aquila in the early hours of Monday. Reuters
Updated 22:10 with Reuters video Aquila, Abruzzo, Italy (GenevaLunch) - At least 130 people are now reported dead, according to Reuters, with the number rising, and scores of people are missing after an earthquake measuring 6.3 on the Richter scale hit this town of 60,000 people shortly after 03:00 Monday morning (Google map). Numerous buildings in the old city were badly damaged. The epicentre was reportedly 5 km under the city.
Aquila is about 100 km northeast of Rome and tremors were felt in the Italian capital. The area had several tremors during the day Sunday.
Details, TSR (Fre), La Stampa (Ita), Reuters
Video, Reuters
NPR, National Public Radio in the US, carries a long feature on one family’s efforts to build new lives several months after the devastating earthquake in Sichuan 12 May that left 88,000 people dead and 5 million homeless.
First figures ut from authorities in Pakistan show 160 people died in a powerful earthquake that hit Pakistan’s Baluchistan Province Wednesday. Reuters
Fifty-eight people have died in an earthquake that registered 6.6 which hit the border region between Kyrgystan and Tajikistan, 350 km south of the capital Bishkek. CNN
