The Great Chilean Earthquake

Valdivia after the 1960 earthquake (Wikipedia Commons)

On May 22, 1960, the world’s strongest instrumentally documented earthquake occurred off the coast of southern Chile. Registering a magnitude of 9.5, the Great Chilean Earthquake felled buildings, tore out bridges, capsized ships, blocked rivers, split streets, sank land, and created a tsunami that rose up to eighty feet along the coast, with damage reaching as far away as the Philippines, Hawaii, Japan, and Alaska. The brunt of the destruction and tragic loss of life occurred in a small historic city near the earthquake’s epicenter — my host city, Valdivia — giving rise to another name for the cataclysm, the 1960 Valdivia Earthquake.

Those darn tectonic plates:

Tectonic plates, sub-layers of the Earth’s crust, are in constant motion, jostling for position against neighboring plates. Subduction zones, where one plate pushes under another, are especially prone to earthquakes and volcanic activity. Lying near the volatile border where the Nazca Plate pushes into the South American Plate, Chile has one of the highest earthquake rates in the world.

A haunting image:

Tsunamis, immense waves generated by the earthquake, caused the worst damage to Valdivia in 1960. They swept over the city, drowning many people and pushing homes from their foundations, reaching a mile inland. An interesting bilingual blog site, a memorial to the 1960 earthquake, recounted the following image: “Then the wave returned to the sea, carrying back small boats with fishermen and whole houses with people alive, asking for help while in their fatal travel to the ocean. They were not to be seen again.” One can’t help but imagine the horror.

After-shocks:

Almost half the houses in Valdivia were destroyed, leaving thousands of people homeless. Ironically, the traditional wooden homes survived the earthquake better than the concrete ones, which back then weren’t fitted to endure such jolts. However, virtually all suffered damage.

The earthquake destroyed the promenade, mentioned in earlier posts, and much of it sank underwater. Thankfully, it was rebuilt, using rubble from the quake to raise it some it was completely rebuilt several years later. A plaque marks the reconstruction.

In my novel:

Clara Valle arrived in Valdivia fifteen years after the Great Chilean Earthquake. Signs of damage remained — parking lots where buildings once stood and capsized ships in the harbor. Decades later, she actually saw the earthquake first-hand — in a journey people attributed to mental illness …