Red Cross Blogs

How the Chile quake shortened the day

By Sarah Oughton
March 5, 2010 at 9:30 am

Ever feel that there are never enough hours in the day? Whenever a major disaster happens, like the Chile earthquake, it certainly heightens that feeling for me and I imagine even more so for those responding on the ground, working round the clock, carrying out search and rescue and providing first aid.

But I was really surprised when a colleague told me that earthquakes literally do shorten the day. The New Scientist explains how big earthquakes can shift the earth’s axis and as a result shave microseconds off the day – it looks like Chile’s quake will have had an effect of 1.26 microseconds and the Indian Ocean tsunami is said to have taken 6.8 microseconds off each day.

On Wednesday, I wrote about how the impact of the earthquake in Chile, which measured 8.8 on the Richter scale, differed from the 7.3 magnitude quake which hit Haiti last month. And after reading another article by the New Scientist I found out why the tsunami resulting from Chile’s devastating quake didn’t have as far reaching and catastrophic an impact as the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 which killed more than 230,000 people. This was to do with it being a comparatively small section (350 km) of the fault which ruptured during Chile’s quake as opposed to a much longer section (1,600 km) during the earthquake which resulted in the Boxing Day tsunami in the Indian Ocean.

However, this is not to say Chile’s quake was not devastating. On Tuesday, an aerial assessment conducted by the Red Cross showed massive damage, in particular to small to medium-sized towns with a large proportion of adobe/mud buildings. For example, the city of Talca, which has a population of 250,000, is almost completely destroyed.

The death toll in Chile is currently around 800 people, about 500 are injured and thousands have been made homeless – in Concepcion alone (Chile’s second largest city) it’s reported 500,000 are homeless. We are appealing for funds to support the Chilean Red Cross which is assessing the damage and needs, distributing emergency relief non-food items, providing first aid and psycho-social support and restoring family links.

Aftershocks are still being felt, and many people are sleeping outdoors or constructing temporary shelters due to fears of buildings collapsing. There is significant damage to roads, bridges and other infrastructure, which is hampering efforts to get aid to some regions.

Communications and access to affected areas remains difficult. Food, water and fuel are scarce, however supplies are beginning to arrive.

Please support our appeal which will help fund the Red Cross work in Chile for the next six months. This includes helping 75,000 people with distributions of emergency relief items, providing shelter and supporting emergency health, water, sanitation and hygiene promotion.

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Tags: Chile, earthquake, Emergency Appeal

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This entry was posted on Friday, March 5th, 2010 at 9:30 am and is filed under Emergencies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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