View from the 35th floor of a building in Santiago, Chile. Photocredit: Fiona Scott/Periscope Post

As the devastation following the massive 8.8 earthquake in Chile sinks in, the country is now calling for outside aid, including generators, water filtration systems, satellite telephones, and field hospitals.

Read The Periscope Post report Fiona Scott’s account of the quake.

The United Nations reported yesterday that in addition to its aid, the UN world Food Programme offered 30 tonnes of food support, to be airlifted from nearby Ecuador, and that a Pan-American Health Organisation emergency team is on stand-by. While Chile, considered Latin America’s most earthquake prepared nation, was able to absorb some of the disaster, the full extent of the damage is quickly being uncovered: More than 700 people are reported dead, while others remain unaccounted for; food shortages are becoming an increasing problem, as is looting and general lawlessness. Some Chileans are already blaming the government, which was in transition between the outgoing and incumbent president, for not being as prepared for the quake as it thought.

The New York Times also reported that the earthquake has also uncovered the deep divisions between the poor and the wealthy in Chile’s society. As Fiona Scott, The Periscope Post’s reporter in Chile noted, the quake has heightened simmering tensions among the country’s social strata, priming the field for a “guerra social” or “social war.”

Sebastian Gray, a professor of architecture at Universidad Católica de Chile, noted in an op-ed in The New York Times today that the quake has also revealed much about the failings of modern architecture: “I am scandalized by the few modern structures that crumbled, those spectacular exceptions you keep seeing on the TV news. The economic bonanza and development frenzy of the last decades have clearly allowed a degree of relaxation of the proud building standards of this country. That’s likely why some new urban highway overpasses, built by private companies with government concessions, are now rubble. It’s a sobering lesson for the neoliberalism favored for the past 35 years, and a huge economic and cultural setback for the country.”

Today’s leading editorial in The New York Daily News seems to echo Gray’s op-ed, albeit with a less sensitive angle: The major difference between this earthquake and the less intense won that nevertheless destroyed Haiti six weeks ago isn’t just down to plate tectonics and preparedness – it’s about building codes. “As Haiti oh-so-slowly rebuilds with the world’s help, it must make sure its rebuilt structures are sturdy enough to protect its people,” the paper concluded.