Chile puts pride aside and requests post-earthquake aid

Damage in Concepción (Juan Eduardo Doñoso / http://www.flickr.com/photos/jotequila/)

What a difference a few days makes. Chile’s no Haiti, but even Latin America’s most transparent, organized, and well-regarded economy needs a helping hand when disaster strikes. Chile’s government initially said it didn’t need outside aid to cope with the powerful quake, surprising many observers who might have been forgiven for considering the gesture foolhardy.

A stiff upper lip and self-reliance may be admirable qualities, but the mounting picture of infrastructure damage and tsunami-delivered death and devastation south of the capital meant Chile began to reconsider its stoicism tinged with nationalist pride.

Yesterday, ahead of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s arrival in Chile today, the government of President Michelle Bachelet acknowledged her country needed help. The Jornal do Brasil newspaper in Brazil today led with this headline and story (my translation):

Chile, finally, asks for help

Three days after a violent earthquake registering 8.8 on the Richter scale, which has left at least 723 dead, Chile gave in to the catastrophe’s dimension and officially solicited help from the United Nations. The priorities include mobile bridges, satellite phones, electric generators, tents and field hospitals, surgical and dialysis equipment. The first help came from Argentina.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva traveled to Santiago after hearing from President Michelle Bachelet that the damages had been more severe than at first thought. Lula promised help with reconstruction and guaranteed that Brazilians would be repatriated.

It’s interesting to note that many observers, this blog included, compared the Chilean case to Haiti’s and noted that for various reasons, the most important of them architectural and geological, Chile got off easier than Haiti despite having suffered a far more powerful quake.

But what we’re seeing now is the limits of Chile’s preparations (especially with regards to tsunami risks) and response capabilities. This does not necessarily mean the Chilean state is as weak as the Haitian one, or that its government is particularly incapable. It may only mean that in our super-populated, mobile and interconnected world of roads, metropolises, and coastal resorts (many of the Chileans killed were vacationers in seaside towns) we are more vulnerable to disasters.

Another fact is that development is uneven, even in economically robust developing countries. Chile has been a growth story, but not all Chileans made it into the big up-to-code residential high-rises that dominate the country’s skylines and fared relatively well in the quake. Some still live in adobe structures of mud and straw that were for obvious reasons most vulnerable, according to The Wall Street Journal:

Chile’s stringent, well-enforced building codes saved most modern buildings and countless lives. Still, extensive use of adobe in older structures meant that many of those buildings fell in the hardest-hit regions of the country.

Argentine newspaper La Nacion also called into question the role of Chile’s military. Chile has been building up its armed forces to the tune of 10 billion dollars since 1990, according to the paper. But the military, with resources in logistics and personnel, seemed strangely absent in the immediate aftermath of the quake.

An Air Force official quoted by La Nacion said he was never given the order to deploy his aircraft. Also, the chaos in second-city Concepcion did not receive a quick and effective military response despite dramatic pleas for assistance from the city’s mayor.

Perhaps it’s a question of a former military dictatorship being reluctant to deploy its armed forces. However, if there is one legitimate civilian purpose for a powerful military it is disaster response.