Government of Chile says over 500,000 homes

[malaise]

were severely damaged. We won't know real figures including loss of life for a few days but the figures won't be anything near Haiti's death toll.

[aquart]

1. The infrastructure of Chile is intact.

And they really tried to build to withstand the Big Ones.

Still, there is a collapsed 15-story building with people screaming. So they have a lot of digging to do and the airport will be closed for 72 vital hours. Help is going to have to drive in from surrounding nations.

[Arctic Dave]

2. I don't want to sound like I'm using these tragedies as a talking point

but these are the resons for strong gov't building codes. In Alaska we have too many people who complain that the state is too intrusive as to how they can build their homes and businesses.

[malaise]

3. The same people who are anti-government

blame governments for not enforcing said building codes.

[Arctic Dave]

5. They are usually the wonder why things fall apart so easily.

Building codes are a lot like fire codes, they are written with a lot of blood.

[provis99]

7. it appears the strong building codes in Chile have worked.

I see very few people were killed, though half a million places were wrecked, for a massive earthquake like this. If this had happened in China or LA, we'd be talking about tens or hundreds of thousands of people dead.

[tekisui]

4. Half a million. Wow. Although there won't be the

same loss of life, this will still need a major humanitarian effort. There will be a million+ internally displaced. Thankfully, CHile has a functioning government and neighboring nations with support abilities.

[Liberal_in_LA]

6. Hopefully chile will be better off than Haiti. And let's not forget about Haiti

[rabs]

8. Think this may be incorrect

What I heard on Chilean TV was that 400,000 people were "damnificados" by the quake.

"Damnificados" means "affected," such as with power outages, water outages, damages to the structures. Does not necessarily mean that 400K or 500k houses were "severely damaged."

Chile for the past half-century has had a very strict building code and all new construction must be designed to withstand severe shocks.

This one was very strong, yet the damage is nowhere near the destruction in the Haiti mag. 7 quake.