For a scary look into the near-future of Chile (and all earthquake-prone locales worldwide), have a look at www.earthquakes.usgs.gov, which is tracking and posting an hour-by-hour count on continued tremors in Chile. Fifty minutes ago a 5.5 magnitude quake was registered at Libertador General Bernardo O’Higgins; six hours ago a 5.8 magnitude quake rolled under the Bio-Bio region; two days ago it was 6.6. just offshore Bio-Bio. These strong aftershocks are keeping hundreds of thousands of people both frightened and unwilling to sleep inside.
Last November I had Andy Revkin of the Times on the phone minutes after he had stepped off a plane in New York from Istanbul, one of the most quake-threatened cities in the world. He’d gone to Turkey to research a story about the future of man and earthquakes, since the disasters seemed inevitable. It was a smart reporting move, coming just a couple months before sizable quakes rocked both Haiti and Chile. His story, published ten days ago, suggests that if an earthquake similar in strength to what hit Port au Prince hit Istanbul, a million people could die. And the Chile quake was many times more powerful than the one that struck Haiti.
Andy reports that the World Bank has loaned Turkey $800 million to help bolster schools, hospitals and public buildings against the most severe earthquake shock, but that will hardly be enough.
On a more personal note, I heard last week from old friend Daniel Gonzalez, one of Chile’s most switched-on environmentalists (he’s worked off and on over the years helping Doug Tompkins assemble his million-plus acre national park and is now working to help keep southern Patagonia free of even more hydropower dams). Daniel and his entire family are friends; they are from Concepcion, Chile’s second-largest city, situated near the epi-center of Chile’s initial quake. Currently living in Colorado, he’s headed home in a few days and his big concern is that while summer is just winding down, the cold months of winter are not far off and it’s unlikely that the one-million-plus people left homeless by the quake will have adequate places to live. He’s encouraging everyone – especially those of us with strong connections in the outdoor consumer goods world – to think about donating and sending tents, sleeping bags, fleece, boots and headlamps down south.
The newly-elected president of Chile, Sebastian Pinera, is to be inaugurated in a few days. On one hand these next months will be an incredible trial by fire for he and his new administration, testing its ability to both rebuild the country and simultaneously keep the populace safe and optimistic. On the other, the rebuilding will funnel all kinds of international aid money and loans into Chile, which – if spent prudently – will allow the government to properly fix a lot of infrastructure that needed to be fixed.
While earthquakes are currently natural disaster number one, for obvious reasons, they are just one threat that will grow as man’s booming numbers continue to crowd the natural world. Stay-tuned as the ocean continues to rise at record pace ….
It was twenty years ago today — March 3, 1990 — that my friend Will Steger and five international polar men completed what will forever be the most audacious crossing of Antarctica. Their Trans-Antarctica Expedition will last in Antarctica history for a variety of reasons: Its length and duration (3,741 miles in 221 days, requiring that it start in winter and end in winter). Because it was the last expedition by dog (dogs were outlawed the following year by an amendment to the Antarctic treaty). And its expense (upwards of $12 million).
The book Will and I wrote about the expedition – CROSSING ANTARCTICA – has just been republished. Readying the book for reprinting I have reread it several times during the past few months and was happily reminded of just how audacious an undertaking it was, beginning with the incredible complexities of coordinating a six-man team from six different countries on a continent ruled by international treaty.
LUNCH, Trans-Antarctica Expedition 1989-90, Photo by Will Steger
But what I was re-impressed by most was that this was a REAL ADVENTURE story. There is nothing faux when you’re dealing with a fierce winter storm that lasts sixty days, or the threat of running out of dog food far, far from help, or the mental struggle of having to get up every morning for seven months, endure -40 degree days of pushing through deep snow … without giving in to the inevitable human desire to simply give up.
In one of its anniversary issues Outside chose a few of the “best opening lines ever” from an adventure book. The first paragraph of CROSSING ANTARCTICA was included:
“July 25, 1989 – The stench of wet dogs, kerosene, cigarette smoke, molding cheese and sweat-stained clothing saturated the air of the Soviet ‘flying coffin’ as we closed in on Antarctica. Fifty-odd passengers readied themselves for what we fully expected to be a crash landing. My partner in this expedition-to-be, a diminutive Frenchman named Jean-Louis Etienne, was standing beside my seat. He leaned over and insisted the smell that permeated the tense cabin and increased the tension was one he recognized; it was, he said, the smell of adventure.”
The expedition would end on the far side of the continent, near the Russian base of Mirnyy. No team has ever, or most likely will ever, cross a similar distance on the seventh continent. On the final day, March 3, the team was exhausted but exhilarated. Midway through the expedition a variety of options had been considered, including reducing the team to four, or perhaps quitting altogether. Its successful conclusion – broadcast live by ABC News, a huge deal and expense at the time – was one of those brilliant memories we will all carry for a lifetime.
On that last day Will wrote in his journal, “… we traveled the final sixteen miles under perfect, clear skies and temperatures hovering just below zero.
“We could see the deep blue of the Indian Ocean the entire day. Sunlight danced and glared off the icebergs that had lined up to greet us, and we crested the hill overlooking the Soviet base just before seven o’clock. As we headed down one last icy slope – men shouting encouragement to the dogs, the dogs howling out of pleasure at the scene that spread before them – an aura of peace swept over me as the responsibilities of the past three years and these last 3,741 miles lifted from my shoulders.
“As I skied the last half mile I could not erase from my mind a picture of another time, another cold place. It was April 1986, the middle of the frozen Arctic Ocean, when Jean-Louis and I first met. He stepped to the top of a ridge of jumbled sea ice, seemingly out of nowhere, and we embraced, like brothers, though we’d never even been introduced. Everything that we’d done these past years evolved from that fated moment, from that embrace. We had turned our dreams – about adventure and cooperation, about preservation and the environment – into realities. We had the confidence to take risks, and the scene splayed in front of us now was our reward, our affirmation.
“The Soviets had marked our entryway with red flags and made a Finish line. A gathering of one hundred, speaking a dozen different languages, swarmed around us as we came down the flag bedecked chute. As I called my dogs to a stop one last time and stepped out of my skis, Jean-Louis walked toward me. I lifted Sam onto my shoulder and Jean-Louis – completing the circle begun those years ago in the middle of the Arctic Ocean – wrapped us both in a bear hug.”
For the past twenty years I’ve traveled to Chile nearly every year. I was initially drawn by the long, skinny country’s incredible wealth and variety of natural beauty: Super-dry deserts, the snow-peaked Andes, a wild, 3,000-mile long ocean coast, the bosque forests of the south, windy Patagonia and its southern icecap. (Lay Chile over the northern hemisphere and it would run from roughly Puerto Vallarta to Juneau, with all of the same landscapes). Both hemispheres share similar geology too. Of the ten most powerful earthquakes recorded, four have taken place in Chile, including the biggest ever, in 1960, registering 9.5 … about one thousand times more powerful than the horrific tremblor that shook the center of the country this past weekend.
Ralco Dam, on the Rio Bio Bio
I first went to Chile for adventure, running some of its wildest rivers, climbing its snowiest peaks, trudging across its high desert. But at the exact time I started visiting, in 1990, the country was changing incredibly thanks to the popular vote that ousted General Augusto Pinochet. Between adventures I started tracking down the most intriguing people in the country and spending time with them, pen and pad in had, documenting the evolution from dictatorship back to democracy. Given its relatively small population and the fact that only a couple hundred families then ran the country, it was pretty easy to meet the best and brightest, many of who are still my peers, travel mates and friends.
I’ve been conversing with several of them via email in recent days; most live in the capital of Santiago, where more than one-third of the population lives. So far, so good, everyone accounted for. But I’ve driven the length of the country a couple times and know the towns most damaged, including Talca, Lota and Constitucion. While better built to fend off quaking than Port au Prince, these are still poor towns where building has boomed in recent years and there are already suggestions that not enough was done to prepare the new infrastructure for this inevitability.
One of the things that drew me most to Chile initially was its big rivers. I was peripherally involved in the last days of the fight to keep dams off the Rio Bio Bio (a losing cause) and moreso in continuing fights to keep dams off the Patagonian rivers like the Futaleufu and Baker (for a few years I owned land on the Fu). I’ve been wondering since the earth shook violently the other day how the big dams on the Bio Bio built in the 1990s – at Ralco and Pangue – survived the quake, since they are not far from its epi-center. They must not have cracked too seriously, since there’s been no report of leaks. But big dams built near fault lines are always at risk. I’ve traveled on the Yangtze in China as well, watched its powerful utilities ram dams through the system, displacing millions and had identical concerns I have about Chile: What if an earthquake shakes, rattles and rolls one of these man-made concrete structures to cracking. Millions will be impacted, in a very bad way. I’d be very curious to read the inside reports being written right now by Chile’s big utility company, Endesa, about just how at-risk those big dams on the Bio Bio are.
Who is surprised that a thirty-year-old, six-ton orca living in a swimming pool in which he cannot even turn around doesn’t on occasion act out. In the case last week where the show-whale named Tilikum took one of his trainers by surprise and drowned her – while obviously a heart-breaking incident for the poor woman, her family, friends, peers, etc. – really, who is shocked? I’m surprised it doesn’t happen more often with animals of any kind that are locked up, caged or kept in captivity. Two of my peers, highly respected in the big mammal world, wrote slightly different takes on Tilikum’s future. Dr. Naomi Rose, senior scientist with the Human Society International, suggests “thinking outside the swimming pool” retiring the big whale to a sea pen off Iceland, where he was initially captured in 1983. Ric O’Barry, the TV dolphin trainer cum dolphin rescuer, star of the fantastic documentary “The Cove,” takes a stiffer line, suggesting that SeaWorld be investigated for violating marine mammal laws and that returning the big animal to shows was cynical if not illegal, knowing what they do — and what they have known — about his disposition.
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