Renaca Beach: Tsunami Debris

A couple of weekends ago I took the dogs for a walk along the beach in Renaca. The beach there is usually pretty clean with little drift wood or rubbish- it must be something to do with the geography of the bay...

This time, however, the beach was covered in debris...and it was sadly clear why. The tsunami that destroyed towns and villages along the coast in the 6th and 7th Regions was depositing what it had taken from them on beaches up and down the length of the country- pieces of people's homes, children's toys and whatever else floats...

Valparaiso Earthquake and Tsunami-Fun and Frolics in the Port.

A while ago, National Geographic produced a documentary about what would happen if Valparaiso were to be hit by a 9.5 scale, Subduction Earthquake. Here's a couple of minutes of the video. It's quite entertaining. Of course, i'm not worried-my house is completely renovated and it's shaped like a ship so we'll just sail off into the sunset if the waters make it up here :)

Edificio El Mercurio-Before and After

Here's an old photo of the Edificio El Mercurio taken in the early 1920s. Not much has changed on the outside since the building was completed in 1901. It's just a little bit dirtier these days but it's in great shape for a building that has withstood two huge earthquakes** in 1906 and 1985. It's one of my favourite buildings downtown and a pretty potent symbol of the wealth that Valparaiso used to enjoy. The newspaper that used to be written and printed in the building is now a bit of a joke. It's the world's oldest Spanish language newspaper still in print but it went tabloid a while back and stopped bothering to invest any money in decent journalism. El Mercurio (de Santiago) is the country's most important newspaper these days so Valpo's version just doesn't really matter anymore.

I keep meaning to go in to the building as i'd like to see the archives- there's apparently a mini-museum in there as well, you just have to ask nicely to go see it (or so i've been told). Hopefully i'll have some time after New Year.














*Speaking of earthquakes, while i was in Argentina there was a bit of a rumble- a 6 on the Richter Scale. There have been quite a few aftershock tremors over the last few days as well including 2 yesterday evening (i didn't feel them). There was very little damage fortunately and no major injuries, although a couple of houses fell down in one of the poblaciones high in the hills. Apparently, some people really believed the big one was coming as it felt a lot stronger than a 6. That pleasure still awaits us...One thing about Cerro Concepcion is that it is apparently the most solid bedrock in the city. No houses have ever fallen down on Concepcion due to earthquakes, although i strongly suspect that this won't be the case during the next biggie. Termite damage has left many houses here in a terrible structural state, something most people here can't afford to fix.

A quick knee trembler

It's good that i've done this whole renovate an old house lark before because, to the untrained eye, the upstairs 2 floors look a total disaster. Luckily, i'm able to see through all the junk lying around and it's obvious things have moved forward quite a lot in the 2 weeks since going on holiday.

The structure is almost completely finished, there are just a couple more walls to be rebuilt-that'll be done this week. The tubing for the electrical wiring is almost done, the central heating pipes are going in, the carpenter has finished about half the windows and one full side of the house is now painted its shiny new red.

We had a little tremor this morning, nothing major and only a couple of seconds long...but it must have given the builders a bit of a scare seeing as they're standing on a scaffolding platform 20 metres up...

Here are a couple of photos of the house as seen from a hotel on Lautauro Rosas (Valparaiso's most expensive street), of the junk cluttering up the place and of the front of the house being rebuilt.

On this side of the house only the top floor has been painted. They'll start dangling later this week to paint the rest.

Earthquake!

So i'm just sitting here, minding my own business, drinking a cup of tea and reading the morning 'paper when along comes a little tremor...that slowly turns into an earthquake and then calms back down to being just a little tremor. I'm pretty used to the regular tremors that Chile suffers these days but this one was the strongest and longest i've felt. It wasn't major, at first guess i'm going to say a little over 5.0 on the Richter Scale (i'll confirm later). The flat we're in got a bit shaky and the apartment block they're building across the way wobbled a bit. I assume the house in Valpo held up without any problems, especially after all the structural repairs we've done over the last couple of months. And we've just had a little after shock. Life in Chile is never dull.

**Update: Despite newspaper reports stating that the tremor was around 4 on the Richter Scale and that it lasted just 10 seconds, The National Emergency Institute begs to differ and puts it at 5.1. And i beg to differ of the length-it lasted a minute or so...

***Further update: We went to see how work was getting on at the house in Valpo and asked how it stood up to the earthquake. The answer? The workers didn't even feel it, the second time that's happened in the last couple of months. Solid as a rock the old girl. It'd explain why it has already survived two of Chile's worst earthquakes in 1906 and 1985 with barely a scratch.

The earth moved for me, baby...

After discovering that our house was a on its last legs, structurally speaking, the last thing we needed was an earthquake. However, Mother Earth-who's a bit of an old crone these days, constantly complaining about global warming and all that-had other ideas...

So, it was at 6.20am that we were woken up by a gentle shaking of the earth. Which slowly became a little less than gentle and then tailed off after about 25 seconds. It was only a 4.0 on the Richcter Scale though so not that strong. The epicentre, 50km up the coast in Papudo was a 5.0. Of course, here in Chile, anything under a 7.0 is not really considered an earthquake, merely a 'tremor'-if you think that the earthquake in Iran a couple of years ago that killed something like 80,000 people was only 5.5 on the scale, you'll get an idea of how used to these things Chileans, in general, are. That 5.5 would just be a 'temblor' here. Anyway, the old girl held up ok (more than can be said for the girlf's uncle who stayed the night and ran around like a headless chicken) but we should probably get on with the structural stuff asap.

Yesterday at 1pm there was a proper earthquake. It occurred in Aisen, in Chilean Patagonia and measured a big, fat 8.0 on the Richcter Scale (**now being reported variously as anything between 6.2 and 7.3, still pretty big but not as big as first reported). It caused a mini-tsunami, roads to split in two and there are 10-20 people missing at the moment....