First, what was effected by the earthquake? There was extensive damage in the 8th region north, with many areas completely leveled. We do not want to dismiss in anyway the seriousness of what occurred, but also want to make clear where it really occurred and what the nature of the damage was really like. There is plenty of real tragedy, without inaccurate or false reports to distract from aid and reconstruction efforts.  

As stated in the intro to this article, there was no earthquake damage south of Temuco. West of Temuco along the coast line there was extensive damage. Most of it was not caused by the earthquake directly, but by the Tsunami waves that followed. Low areas on the coast around Puerto Savadra had buildings destroyed from the waves. The island of Isla Mocha off the coast also suffered from the Tsunami wave. North of Temuco areas with traditions of building with adobe suffered the most damage. Even in much of the 8th region towns, roads, and municipalities are fully functional in spite of the damage and reconstruction efforts by aid organizations and the Chilean government are well under way. Hospitals, schools, bridges are already built or being built. Temporary houses for thousands of homeless have already been constructed, and permanent housing is on the way.  The Chilean goverment is committing over $8 billion dollars in the first 60 days to reconstruction, with many billions more to follow. Chile luckily is a rich country with little debt that can easily muster the funds from its own existing resources. 

During our recent aid flights and projects after the quake, Spencer Global and volunteers were able to survey much of the damage directly. We spoke to people on the ground, police, Chilean Airforce and military units, and coordinated with aid agencies across Chile on a daily basis. We want to give the World a real picture of what happened and what we witnessed personally. 

The picture painted by the national and especially the international media is that of cities and towns leveled to the ground in a Haiti style disaster across Chile. This has mostly been done by showing the same images repeatedly. This is simply not true. Even in the worse hit areas, building collapses where limited and again mostly focused on areas with adobe construction in the central 8th to 6th regions. Not in Southern Chile.

Total collapses of newer buildings across Chile amounted to exactly 1 building. Approximately 30 others suffered serious partial failures but not catastrophic collapse, and people were able to escape. About 100 to 200 or so large buildings in Chile will be slated for complete demolition because damage is too extensive to repair.  Again, this was from an historical 8.8 earthquake that covered almost 500 miles of Chile. The historical part being that it is possibly the largest earthquake in history to hit modern urban areas with so few deaths as a result. That story obviosiously does not make for the best ratings or help encourage donations outside Chile.   

For example, the International Red Cross representive in Chile reported in an interview on CNN that thousands of people are still missing as recently as the week of March 22nd and that many remote areas had not been reached a month after the earthquake. They specifically stated that no one knew how many were missing. This is completely false, and why the IRC and CNN would publish such blatantly false information is unknown to us other than they simply do not know themselves. The IRC (not to be confused with the Chilean Cruz Roja) in their defense did not arrive and become operational in Chile until almost three weeks after the earthquake, well after communication had been reestablished to all parts of Chile. Still, the IRC not knowing is not the same as no one knowing. We know and most everyone living in Chile knows the real story.

The death toll including both victims of the tsunami and earthquake stands at around 450 people across Chile, and missing at under 90 people. Higher numbers were initially reported of nearly a thousand people in the first days because of conflicting lists of missing and dead published by various unofficial sources around Chile and problems with communication in to the remote areas. 

We know that the IRC and CNN is incorrect firsthand as we assisted extensively with search and rescue operations, locating missing people (hundreds), and flying aid to remote areas and towns across the 7th , 8th, and 9th regions of Chile since the earthquake. This included remote islands off the coast such as Isla Mocha and small towns across the 7th, 8th, and 9th region. Our team of volunteers flew thousands of miles, spoke with hundreds of people in dozens of towns personally, and never ever did we encounter any indication that this was the case or might potentially ever be the case. We never found much more than a handful of reports of dead, missing, or unaccounted for in any given location, and this was confirmed officially once communication were established fully. We were in constant conversations with the military, pilots at flying clubs (we worked with over two dozen private pilots), aid agencies, mayors offices, and so on throughout the weeks after the earthquake. None have reported anything that would substantiate the claims made by the IRC representatives in Chile, or even suggest that it might be a possibility.  

We personally encountered exactly one incident of 2 missing and presumed dead on the island of Isla Mocha off the coast of the 9th region, and used our plane to assist the family and the military with air searches for the bodies. The missing people in this case were camping on the beach, and did not receive the tsunami warning because the locals living on the island did not know they were there.  The woman and little girl were recently declared dead and their bodies were never found after a nearly month long search by the family. Two other tourist were also killed on the island by the tsunami wave. The presumption that they were not likely to have survived however was known almost immediately. This is the case with almost all others that are still listed as missing.

Again, this is not a Haiti style disaster in anyway with bodies in the thousands still unrecovered or mass unmarked graves being required. Why the massive difference between the 8th regionnorth and the rest of southern Chile is simple. Wood construction has always been more common in the south of Chile. That is in addition to the regions to the North of Temuco having been spared in previous large earthquakes near Santiago in the 80's and the earthquakes in southern of Chile in the 60's. Many of the oldest and most unsafe historical adobe constructed buildings escaped serious damage in those previous quakes, and thus were simply cosmetically repaired rather than being replaced with better construction. New standards and restrictions on adobe construction are being implemented for historical buildings.  

Southern Chile is very much here. The tragedy that is now unfolding however in the rest of Chile is an as one small business owner put it, “we are now facing an economic tsunami”.   

Tourism and investment has been greatly effected across southern Chile because we believe these false or misleading reports in the international media have given the World the wrong idea that all of Southern Chile is damaged. allsouthernchile.com, allchile.net, and Spencer Global will be initiating promotional campaigns throughout 2010 to help the small businesses and tourism industry in Southern Chile to recover. Most importantly we want the World to know that Southern Chile is still very much open for business.

If you still are not convinced, the following picture should be contrasted with pictures from other distasters around the World such as Haiti, New Orleans, or the Asian Tszunami where there really was thousands of dead  and missing. The picture below is from one of the hardest hit and most ignored areas of Chile in the 7th region taken by us durring one of our aid flights about 14 days after the eathquake. The smiling students, volanteers, military, goverment SAG workers, and others do not match the grim picture painted of by the international media and the IRC of a distaster area that is supposed to have thousands of dead and missing. This is is in the heart of one of the most effected areas, not even in Southern Chile. Yes, there is suffering in many parts of Chile, but there is not the level of suffering that would be expected.