Chile Forum

I still had about a half dozen MIA on our list, that finally showed up. I was honestly going to have vince put us down in Concepción and other areas with the plane, and go find them. I just wish it would have occurred to me a couple days earlier to call him (put that on the list of things to do next time).

Cali wrote

perhaps they'll be smart enough to put someone who speaks english in charge of communicating with the international science community.... but that's probably expecting too much.

Many years ago, when I had just left school I decided to become a flight attendant for a while for an American airline. One night we took off from Pudahuel with full capacity cargo and passenger 747 heading for LAX. As soon as both wheels where off the ground one of the four engines decided to call it quits. The cockpit crew had barely enough time to turn over Maipu and land straight away while we all prepared the cabin for an emergency landing. It was a close one since loosing 25% of your power at such a critical stage is not funny.

There were a few fires burning in some fields in Maipu - it was the middle of summer - and the captain had radioed the control tower - the Santiago international airport tower that is - saying " I have lost an engine". The genius in charge at control tower called the president of the airline at midnight saying that the plane had lost an engine and that he already had the fire crew looking for it on the ground. Most of you will know that the term " losing and engine does not necessarily mean misplacing it but just "not counting on it". It is widely used in navigation.

When we landed a few minutes later and the control tower manager saw that the plane had all of its four engines still attached to the plane, he called the president of the airline again saying that he could go back to bed now because there WERE no lost engines.

Still today, I am flabbergasted at how Chile still manages to give critical communication jobs to people who are not completely bilingual, so it doesn't surprise me at all the navy botched up the tsunami warning.

A

Earlier this week I had one of our junior attorneys call the Chilean honorary consulate in Boston (or close to there). The guy in charge did not speak Spanish. He was not even Chilean. How hell do you become a diplomat for a country, when you are neither a national of the country nor able to speak the language?

One strong signal that Pinera put out was that he staffed his entire ministries with people that went to graduate school outside the country. If they don't all speak English, they at least speak German.

Atlantis wrote:Cali wrote

perhaps they'll be smart enough to put someone who speaks english in charge of communicating with the international science community.... but that's probably expecting too much.

Did he? I suppose he must have done, but I can't figure out where. I'm lost

Atlantis wrote:Many years ago, when I had just left school I decided to become a flight attendant for a while for an American airline. One night we took off from Pudahuel with full capacity cargo and passenger 747 heading for LAX. As soon as both wheels where off the ground one of the four engines decided to call it quits. The cockpit crew had barely enough time to turn over Maipu and land straight away while we all prepared the cabin for an emergency landing. It was a close one since loosing 25% of your power at such a critical stage is not funny.

When it was my turn for this in 2008 (also to LAX, but with LAN and a 767 I believe) the pilot headed out over the Pacific and flew up and down for three hours dumping fuel before the plane was light enough to land. Surprised your 747 was able to land so fast...

Atlantis wrote:Still today, I am flabbergasted at how Chile still manages to give critical communication jobs to people who are not completely bilingual, so it doesn't surprise me at all the navy botched up the tsunami warning.

In principle I have some understanding for this, it's at least in part a consequence of Chile being "cut off" from the rest of the world during Pinocchio's dictatorship. In a similar way, many people of my generation from Spain, for example (mid-40s or so) don't speak English very well as during Franco's dictatorship they learned French at school. And the Chilean school system hasn't been very well run over the past 20 years or so, it's only relatively recently that they've moved away from the morning and afternoon school rota system. And finally, there really isn't a tradition of literacy or reading for pleasure in Chile... To be honest, I thought that Chile had come as far as a country could without educating its people properly and that the economic growth of the past decade was running out of steam.

However, to get back to the subject, Chile has got to draw the line somewhere with supposed professionals in positions where they have to communicate in foreign languages. Charles has made the point in this forum several times about the mid-level administration of Chile being stuffed with people based on nothing more than their political allegiance and their friendships. I don't think anyone expected that this particular bird would come home to roost in such a dramatic way

ok...yeah...i get it....the chilean education system sucks and the country was isolated for 20 years....but....is there anyone who doesn't know that chile is seismically active? is there anyone who doesn't know that the major fault line, the one that has caused three major earthquakes in the past 50 years, is offshore? is there anyone who doesn't know that large underwater earthquakes cause tsunamis?

the regular joes on the ground knew what to do...get to higher ground....and most of them did....but the people in charge of protecting the population were asleep at the wheel and unprepared, despite the international warning system in place.

we're not talking about diplomacy or making more money for your company, we're talking about saving lives. there is NO EXCUSE for not having a fool proof tsunami warning system in place. it's absurd....especially when we learn that one of the weak links was a simple language issue. whoever put the non-english speaking technician in that critical position is guilty of gross negligence and should be prosecuted.

on a slightly larger scale, i think we will find that the navy as a whole was not prepared for this. hopefully, with the new government coming in, the chilean navy will get a badly needed overhaul. sadly, it's another case of reacting after the fact.

Frank pintor wrote:

When it was my turn for this in 2008 (also to LAX, but with LAN and a 767 I believe) the pilot headed out over the Pacific and flew up and down for three hours dumping fuel before the plane was light enough to land. Surprised your 747 was able to land so fast...

Yes, that is the normal procedure, but our plane could never get enough lift and the pilot had to put the plane back on the ground asap. I discussed this the next morning with my father who was a pilot for the FAA - ex air force and many others - and he said that what he did was correct. The plane wouldn't stand a chance of clearing the nearest hill let alone the cordillera de la costa.

Charles I am PM'ing you - that's an unusual verb - the receipt that I got from Steph for the donation that I put into HER account which in turn she put into yours. pheeew

I checked my credit card and still no refund. Not for you to do anything about it, just letting you know as you asked us to.

And the end of another miracle day for the little plane. I think it should have a nickname.....hmm....female or male?

Frank and Cali, is there a school system in the world that DOESN'T suck? It's just a way for governments to create the flock who will be paying them through force, to stay in their comfy jobs.

http://schoolsucks.podomatic.com/

Atlantis wrote:Frank and Cali, is there a school system in the world that DOESN'T suck? It's just a way for governments to create the flock who will be paying them through force, to stay in their comfy jobs.

http://schoolsucks.podomatic.com/

Omigod that site has sooo many links and sooo much to read (but a lot is kind of polemic) and I sooo want to get even but all the references I can find are premium content and I can't even access them anymore Apart from http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/11/28/44417824.pdf, all I can offer are anecdotes and a personal viewpoint. And btw I'm not even a teacher, lecturer, or any other kind of "educator" (and please don't mention "home schooling" in my presence)... just an interested bystander... who believes that a country needs every child educated as well as possible.

I don't buy the "paying them through force" thing, at least not in the long run. Education is a paradox: educated people are needed to work in a modern economy, but educated people think for themselves... as even China is discovering.

I guess most if not all school systems do suck in their individual ways. I used to be a big fan of Ireland's educational system (hell, it took us from the poorest country in the western hemisphere to highest income country in Europe, and.. well, I'm a graduate of it..) but it seems that grade inflation plus full employment (at least until 2 years ago) added up to everyone wanting to be a sociology graduate, as everyone who graduated would be employed Hmmm. And Germany's educational system, which was widely admired and I believe copied by Chile (along with the army hmmm again) was condemned by the UN rapporteur 3 years ago as violating immigrants' childrens' basic right to education. And also for forcing parents to decide what their 11-year-old children are going to be in the future. I lived in the US (California) for 2 years but I didn't have any direct experience with the school system there (though it does seem to be hostage to a whole lot of special interests). The overall system may be mediocre but there is a critical mass of excellence which can pull the US forwards. Perhaps the only people to escape the general educational suckiness are the Finns, according to the OECD's Pisa reports.

But the most important objective for an educational system is to teach people to think for themselves, how to learn, rather than learn lists and categories as it seems Chile's school system does. I think that if Chile is not to "run out of steam" in the modern world it needs to make a big investment at all levels from kindergarden to third level education because it's come as far as it can with "just" a relatively clean government and lack of interference in people's day to day lives. It needs people who think for themselves, and who, with respect to the earthquake, can not just speak English, but design and run simulations and exercises, specify mobile phone networks (so they have redundancy and don't go down), realize the need for and buy satellite phones, set up relief networks... the earthquakes can't be avoided, but a lot of the post-earthquake problems could have been avoided with a little thought and preparations.

And, BTW, we're in agreement... "NO EXCUSE for not having a fool proof tsunami warning system in place".

Frank P wrote:

I don't buy the "paying them through force" thing,

so.....you think tax is voluntary?

Atlantis wrote:Frank P wrote:

I don't buy the "paying them through force" thing,

so.....you think tax is voluntary?

Perhaps you think education is free?

I don't think we're going to agree on this, and probably the thread has been hijacked far enough anyway that nobody really cares about it any more, but instead of putting straw men up for one another to knock down, maybe consider this: your "flock" creates the government and a "social contract" between the two establishes how much is paid for what quality of education (and many other things). The flock can vote the government out if the social contract isn't kept. It only gets derailed if special interests can insert themselves.

In the context of Chile, the country as a whole isn't going anywhere in the long term if it can't raise its game in the world. Copper will run out sometime, and the country can't just be a consumer. At some point it will find must produce things the world wants.

Frank

Atlantis wrote:Frank P wrote:

I don't buy the "paying them through force" thing,



so.....you think tax is voluntary?


Perhaps you think education is free?

You cannot asnswer a question with a question. The reason why I asked you if you thought tax was voluntary is because you commented that you didn't believe in "paying them through force thing". What is a state or government if not other than a thief and bully? We do NOT go into a social contract with them, we are FORCED to go into a social contract with them because they have the GUNS!

Education and many other things the state SAYS the do for us can be achieved through an equal agreement in a true free market society - not what we have now - and voluntary contribution in communities. Charles is proof of that.

And you're right, we are not going to agree. The basis is in whether we accept the use of force or not.

We were in Chile a year or two ago when a report on TV stated Chile was due for a large earthquake. The politicians all attempted to refute the report as it could be damaging to tourism. The report was authored by National Geographic, I believe.
On our way home, we were standing in line at the airport check in counter and struck up a conversation with a gentleman who happened to be visiting his son in Santiago. The gentleman was a geologist, having been in Chile multiple times the past 30 years or so. We asked him about the report and the reaction of the Chilean politicians. His reply was the report was correct and the politicians were doing a disservice to the country by not preparing.

Well, the former administration had a hide their head in the sand about a lot of things.

I was thinking...
If Chileans used water heaters instead of califonts for hot water, every household would have had 40-50 gallons of clean water after the earthquake. You just close the intake valve, open the drain and open any faucet in the house to release the vacuum and you have water for a couple days.
I realize gas or propane is very expensive in Chile, but they do make holding tanks that resemble water heaters without the heating apparatus. Perhaps, they can be incorporated into new or reconstruction.
Here in the U.S.A. tankless water heaters are all the rage. Even in earthquake, hurricane, and tornado prone areas. Hmm...

I don't think they would have solved all that many problems, at least not relative to the cost of waisted energy. The common inline water heaters in Chile are really efficient, and seems to serve most of the country well.

There is some sort of government subsidy to install a solar hot water heater now in Chile to preheat water, and they do hold quite a bit of water.