Wednesday 2 April 2014

Chile Quake: Learning from the past

Huge Earthquake hits Chile: 8.2 on the Richter Scale

Tsunami evacuation route sign in Chile

During our nighttime there was a massive earthquake off the coast of Chile. When you read the story below you become aware that lessons have been learned from the Boxing Day tsunami of 2010 and the more recent disaster on Japan. 
The government were expecting a big quake on this destructive boundary and an evacuation plan was in place: people knew what to do. One of the photos shows a sign with an evacuation route on it. 
Admittedly the epicentre is quite a way from any major concentration  of population and the tsunami seems to have been small (<2.5m) compared to the disasters in Indonesia and Japan , BUT, had this quake happened 5 years ago would they have been so well prepared? Would the death toll have been higher?
Read the story and the background information from the BBC: