Chile Forum

my comment about a "500 year event" needs to be clarified. i understand that chile's recent history suggests a big earthquake + tsunami about every 25 years....but how often is a particular place affected? dichato was not affected much by either the 1960 nor the 1985 quakes and tsunamis. valdivia was ruined in 1960, but untouched in 1965 or 2010.....i'll have to look for studies on the history of tsunamis in the dichato area...perhaps the geologists have a better answer.

of course i also understand that lightening CAN strike twice....it's all a probability game.

in terms of buying land in the low area of dichato and starting a business there....hmmm...there are several considerations apart from the quastion of when another tsunami might come. i'll have to wait and see what the government will allow, and what they will require. i have no doubt that dichato will be rebuilt, but i can't predict what restrictions the government will impose. hopefully they will develop a plan that allows the economy to recover and also protects lives.

cabanas and houses in the low areas are not as problematic as many think. there was plenty of time after the earthquake to get to a safe place before the water came...i am talking about 90 minutes or more. there were three fundamental problems in dichato (and other areas where people died in the tsunami)....poorly built houses, a bad warning system and evacuation plan and a lot of people who went back to their houses too soon because they thought that the danger had passed. those problems can be, and should be, explicitly addressed by the chilean government before any rebuilding takes place. will that happen? i have no idea....

quick little anecdote...

i finally fixed the water storage system at my house. that involved re-leveling the bases for the storage tanks and repairing the broken pipes that connect the tanks to each other. i think that i am ready to store 600 liters of water if i can get water delivered somehow.

the water company needs more time to fix their main lines...perhaps another two or three weeks.

i went to the local fire station, which was three guys sitting in a tent near the soccer field where the army is burning the scraps from all the houses that were ruined. i explained my situation to the fire captain, and i asked him if he could fill up the water tanks. 600 liters is a lot of water for me, but i don't think it is a lot of water for them. he said...yes....they can fill up the tanks...for a "donation" of 30.000 pesos, supposedly to cover the cost of driving the truck to my house. i said no thanks.

i found a better way to spend my money.....i filled my car up with gas and drove to santiago. i can take as many showers as i want, i have internet access at home and i don't have to sleep alone. i'll wait here for my work to start up again and when i get back to dichato later this week, maybe the army can help me with my water problem.

i'm still here, and there is some progress to report. the army conitunes to burn the scraps that the tsunami left behind. the wind generally blows the smoke to neighborhood just above the soccer field where most of the locals are now living. i think i heard a doctro say once that breathing smoke form wood, paint, plastic, clothing and such is bad for kids and old folks and sick people. the army´s gotta do what the army´s gotta do.

i FINALLY got water service to the house yesterday. i had been driving to the large storge tanks and filling up 20 liter and 5 liter containers and driving them up to the house. maybe that won´t be necessary anymore....i dunno....i´m keeping a good reserve supply just in case. the water was dirty for about 5 minutes, then it cleared up a lot. it´s not high pressure, that is, not nearly enough pressure to ignite the califont, but it's a lot better than carrying the water up the hill myself.

there were a couple of different non-profit agencies that expressed interest in using the house as a base for their work with the local children. neither group has contacted me for about 5 days, so i'm about ready to start renting rooms to whoever...

the little house in the back is getting a facelift...new subfloor, new carpet and linoleum, paint, new bathtub installed..maybe i´ll have a califont and a wood burning stove installed before the rains come...

my girlfriend told me that the news from santigo is that the people of dichato don´t really need more clothes or food. the people here are not naked or hungry. the need is for housing.

is the new government on top of this? will they:
1. locate land
2. pay local carpenters
3. bring in volunteers
4. think ahead and make a good housing plan?

it'll be interesting to see how pinera's economically savvy cabinet will approach this issue.

on the volunteer front, i can provide housing for anyone that wants to help with the construction of homes for the people that lost everything.

Pinera just announced yesterday 2.5 billion dollars in subsidies for people to either build a new house, buy a new one, or repair their current one. I think it broke down to about 12.5 million pesos each for those effected. Throw in some low interest bank loans and mortgage insurance that many people had, and that is a good spot of money to get things going. I suspect they will need to do more, but that is definitely a start.

Gobierno evalúa norma de edificación costera
http://diario.elmercurio.com/2010/03/31 ... 30DAE6.htm

I find it encouraging that emergency doesn't trump learning from the terre/maremoto, and directly applying those lessons. The article specifically mentions Dichato.

we are still getting fairly strong aftershocks fairly regularly...nothing really big...but enough to make the house creak and the beer in my glass shake. sometimes there´s a deep rumble and the sensation of being on a carpet with large rollers underneath. my heart jumps a little, then i take another sip and go back to whatever i was doing.

i am still schleping water up the hill from the regional water tanks. i had water service from ESSBIO for exactly one day. i have some 20 liter and 5 liter containers, so i can carry 135 liters in my car, which is enough for a shower and a load of laundry and normal cooking and cleaning for a couple of days. i save on water usage by drinking beer instead of water. i´m not sure what the long term fix is gonna be for my water situation. i had problems before the earthquake, and now it is worse. one might think that thgis is an opportunity fro ESSBIO to improve their water delivery system....but i´m not that confident in foriegn owned businesses. i suspect they´ll go for the quick fix, which may leave me in a situation that will require a significant investment on my part.

i have picked up A LOT of hitchhikers since the earthquake...all kinds of people....college kids trying to check on their parents, a woman carrying food from her mother´s farm to her kids, a grandmother who told all about her family, including pictures, in about 10 minutes (she asked me "si o no" about ten times....i just said "si" because i had no idea what she was talking about), a couple volunteers from puerto montt, people on their way to work....

i often see a very strange sight....people dressed for work, neat and professional, walking through ruined neighborhoods, dusty, smoky, people in tents, etc.

the army is still scraping and burning the town. i´d guess the tsunami wiped out about 400 houses. that´s a lot of wood and concrete and toilet bowls. they have shifted some of their attention away from demolition to assembly of the prefab houses that they bring in on flatbeds. there is a small prefab community going up just outside of town. coliumo has a small and a large one already. well...the houses are up, but they don´t have electricity or plumbing yet.

the school is open, but many parents won´t send their kids. firstly because the school is in the tsunami dange zone and we are still getting aftershocks, and secondly because they know that the school was used as a morgue after the tsunami, so they feel creeped out by that.

one of the problems i had before the earthquake was trash disposal. the regular trash service wouldn´t take the rubble from my remodeling project and i couldn´t find anyone with a truck who was willing to help me haul it away somewhere. but no it´s easy. there are two VERY LARGE dump sites where i can throw away anything i want for free...all i have to do is load up my little maruti and roll it down the hill to the dump....

concepcion has lots of problems still. very long commutes, very little parking, inconsistent service from all of the utility services. the other day i went to my mechanic to get some work done on the car. the shop was closed because the roof collapsed. later i tried to spend some time on line at a cyber cafe, and the system crashed within three minutes after i logged on. i went to another ciber and it was full. i went to two others and they were both closed. virtually every block still has piles of rubble, and there are many open trenches all over the city where workmen are repairing the underground pipes. it ain´t nothing like normal yet....

my classes have started again. i have nine students. four of them had to move, and three of them lost their jobs. one of my students was on the 12th floor of an apartment when the earthquake hit....he and his wife made their way down the stairs in the dark with water dripping all over them. after he got down, he realized he had no clothes or money or ID or shoes....so he went back up to get the stuff he needed, went down to the underground parking and drove his car out. he drove to his job at the university of concepcion and it was on fire from the chemicals that spilled....now he is living with his parents....

i am still schleping water up the hill from the regional water tanks. i had water service from ESSBIO for exactly one day. i have some 20 liter and 5 liter containers, so i can carry 135 liters in my car, which is enough for a shower and a load of laundry and normal cooking and cleaning for a couple of days. i save on water usage by drinking beer instead of water. i´m not sure what the long term fix is gonna be for my water situation. i had problems before the earthquake, and now it is worse. one might think that thgis is an opportunity fro ESSBIO to improve their water delivery system....but i´m not that confident in foriegn owned businesses. i suspect they´ll go for the quick fix, which may leave me in a situation that will require a significant investment on my part.

I'm thinking that there's a well in your future. You might ask folks what the water table around you is like. A backhoe for a day, some pipe sections and gravel, you could be pumping water in 3 days. OR have your girlfriend ask a drilling outfit what a drilled setup would cost, a solar powered pump might solve all (or most of ) your problems without breaking the bank.

I have never seen a sandpoint for sale in Chile. You can make a sand point yourself, or you can order them off of amazon.com if you have a shipping method. If you make your own, likely need someone with a welder. I did see some people in the middle east take a piece of plastic pipe, fold it over, and drill some holes in one. Likly not going to last long, but serves the same function.

The army use to just drive a piece of pipe in the ground.

i doubt that i will try to drill a well. a simpler and cheaper solution is simply greater storage capacity, which means buying and installing larger water storage tanks. i think that i will eventually get a reliable source of potable water from ESSBIO, but it won´t be under high pressure and it won´t be available 24/7, so i just need to make sure that i can store a lot of water to get me through the perios of high water usage and low water availability.

Tom, after reading Mikie's comment I remembered that there's a guy in Coliumo who's selling 3.5 acres who claims to have an aquifer running through the property, which is along the Tricahuilo Beach. I don't know if that could have any possibilities for you but anyway, his name is Andres Risso and here is the link.

http://www.viviun.com/AD-118692/

Good luck with everything

A

pinera was in dichato today. i saw him from about 200 meters away. i could have gotten a lot closer, but i wasn´t really that interested in what he was saying....rebuild...blah blah blah...jobs blah blah blah. i´ll be happy if one of those geniuses can figure out a way to pump water to my house.

the scientists say that dichato was raised about 2 1/2 meters by the earthquake, which gives us a slightly wider beach. there are more rocks showing, too.

the dogs are a REAL problem now. lots of abandon dogs scavenging food. they are getting skinnier and hungrier all the time. a few of them have come onto my property, and i chased them away with rocks and lots of curse words. they got the point, but i think they´ll be back.

a mama kitty has moved in under the house. i´d chase her away, too, but she has three little ones and i´m not that mean. i bought some evaporated milk for her. i doubt she´ll ever leave now. trouble is, i think she´s pregnant again. i might have a whole bunch of cats under the house for the winter. i must give her credit for pulling her weight, though. i have found a couple of dead rodents since she moved in, and i´m pretty sure she had something to do with that. i hope she doesn´t start leaving dead rodent gifts for me at the front door....

has it really been two months since i wrote on this thread? i guess it's true what they say about fun and time.

dichato is still recovering. i think that will be true for another couple of years. the army has built about 500 cabins for the people who lost their homes on feb27. there are a couple of modular schools operating. there are two restaurants, a grocery store and a hardware store open now. neither the army nor the caribineros are currently operating any regular road blocks anymore. that's the good stuff.

now the bad stuff.....there has been no progress on repairing the bridge, and the detour is a muddy mess. dichato is drying out now after two weeks of rain, and the families in the pre-fab cabins have had a rough time with the rain and the mud and the lack of a functioning sewer system. bus and taxi service is limited and i carry as many hitch hikers as i can whenever i drive into tome to get supplies.

the water situation at my house is slightly improved. i don't have to carry water in my car anymore. now i have to drive or walk to the water meter, which is about 1km from my house, open the valve, wait about an hour until my water tanks fill up, then turn off the valve and go back home. the water line to my house has several leaks and i lose about 40% of the water before it gets to my house...but...ESSBIO isn't charging me, so it isn't costing me anything but time...and i have a lot of that.

i still don't have internet at the house. the last word from movistar is that they cannot give me a date for when their service might be restored in my sector...they currenly have no plan in place.

the kittens are about 6 months old now and they are beginning to fight over food. the mother cat disappeared about three days ago. a friend told me that she is probably in heat and visiting the local toms and will come back in a week or two. if that happens, i will tranquilize her and get her to vet ASAP, because four cats is plenty.