CASE STUDY NO.

1
CVE165 - K15

MAGNITUDE 9.5 OF VALDIVIA, CHILE:

A CASE STUDY ABOUT THE LARGEST
EARTHQUAKE OF THE 2OTH CENTURY

Submitted by: JANAH R. SABORNIDO

Submitted to: ENGR. STEVE ANTHONY LIM

Department of Civil Engineering

Mindanao State University- General Santos City
Contents

0.1 INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
0.2 VALDIVIA, CHILE (May 22, 1960) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
0.3 URBAN IMPACT/IMPACT ON INFRASTRUCTURE . . . . . . . . . . 4
0.4 CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
0.5 REFERENCES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

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0.1 INTRODUCTION
An earthquake (also known as a quake, tremor or temblor) is the shaking of the surface
of the Earth resulting from a sudden release of energy in the Earth’s lithosphere that
creates seismic waves. Earthquakes can range in intensity, from those that are so weak that
they cannot be felt, to those violent enough to propel objects and people into the air, dam-
age critical infrastructure, and wreak destruction across entire cities. The seismic activity
of an area is the frequency, type, and size of earthquakes experienced over a particular time.
The seismicity at a particular location in the Earth is the average rate of seismic energy
release per unit volume. The word tremor is also used for non-earthquake seismic rumbling.

At the Earth’s surface, earthquakes manifest themselves by shaking and displacing or

disrupting the ground. When the epicenter of a large earthquake is located offshore, the
seabed may be displaced sufficiently to cause a tsunami. Earthquakes can also trigger
landslides.

In its most general sense, the word earthquake is used to describe any seismic
event—whether natural or caused by humans—that generates seismic waves. Earth-
quakes are caused mostly by rupture of geological faults but also by other events such
as volcanic activity, landslides, mine blasts, and nuclear tests. An earthquake’s point of
initial rupture is called its hypocenter or focus. The epicenter is the point at ground level
directly above the hypocenter.

Each year, there are more than one million earthquakes worldwide, or two every
minute on average. One of the deadliest natural disasters that can happen is a significant
earthquake in a city. Over a million people have died as a result of earthquakes worldwide
in the last 40 years (1970–2017), including in Armenia, China, Ecuador, Guatemala,
Haiti, Iran, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, Pakistan, Peru, and Turkey. Excessive
urbanization has created megacities with population densities of 20,000–60,000 people per
square kilometer in many seismically active regions of the world. Such communities are
extremely susceptible to earthquake hazards, which include high case fatality rates for
trauma, asphyxiation, hypothermia, and acute respiratory failure, in addition to fractures
and other injuries brought on by the collapse of infrastructure.
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0.2 VALDIVIA, CHILE (May 22, 1960)

The largest recorded earthquake in the 20th century occurred in Chile in 1960. The
temblor, which began on May 22, 1960, off the southern Chilean coast, was followed by
tsunamis that resulted in significant destruction and fatalities in Chile as well as far-off
Pacific coastal regions. A hundred miles (160 km) off the coast of Chile, parallel to the
city of Valdivia, the earthquake struck around 3:11 PM. Although some research suggested
it may have been 9.4 or 9.6, the magnitude of the shock is usually accepted to have been
9.5. A series of foreshocks the day before had signaled the impending calamity; one, of
magnitude 8.1, significantly damaged Concepción. The Nazca Plate, which subducted
under the South American Plate, was the estimated 560-620 mile (900-1,000 km) length
of land where the earthquake’s fault-displacement source was located. These numbers
are primarily based on post hoc analysis because the earthquake occurred right before
a change in seismologic equipment in the 1960s. Many cities in Chile suffered severe
damage, notably Valdivia, where over half of the structures were deemed inhabitable,
and Puerto Montt, where there was obvious sinking. Even while the earthquake caused
some damage, most deaths were caused by a tsunami that descended 15 minutes later
and reached up to 80 feet (25 meters) high on the length of Chilean coastline that ran
parallel to the subducting plate and was bordered by the cities of Lebu and Puerto Aisen.
2 million people were left homeless as a result of the disaster’s combined impacts. Early
estimates that ranged into the thousands were trimmed back to 1,655 despite the fact
that the death toll was never completely determined.

The waves that arrived about 15 hours later in the Hawaiian Islands—6,200 miles
(10,000 km) away—still peaked at nearly 35 feet (11 meters) in some locations due to the
magnitude of the seafloor movements that generated the tsunamis. At Hilo Bay on the
main island of Hawaii, the waves killed 61 people and left millions of dollars in damage.
The waves had receded to roughly 18 feet (5.5 meters) when they arrived at Honshu,
the largest island in Japan, 22 hours after their generation. By that time, they had
destroyed almost 1,600 homes and claimed the lives of 138 people. The tsunami waves in
the Philippines claimed 32 lives or went missing. Although the waves’ oblique approach to
the American Pacific coast lessened their impact, Crescent City, California, experienced
waves as high as 5.6 feet (1.7 meters), and boats and docks in Los Angeles, San Diego,
and Long Beach sustained damage.
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The South American Plate and the Nazca Plate, which were subducting into each other
on the Peru-Chile Trench, released mechanical tension, causing the megathrust earthquake
that followed. Megathrust earthquakes happen as two tectonic plates collide and are
driven under one another. Slip along the thrust fault that creates the plate contact is what
causes the earthquakes. These interplate earthquakes have moment magnitudes (Mw)
that can approach 9.0, making them the strongest on the globe. Megathrust earthquakes
have made up all earthquakes with a magnitude of nine or above since 1900. Megathrust
earthquakes are caused by thrust faults that frequently sit at the bottom of oceanic
trenches; in such cases, the earthquakes have the potential to rapidly shift the sea floor
over a sizable area. As a result, tsunamis produced by megathrust earthquakes frequently
cause much greater damage than the earthquakes themselves. Teletsunamis can destroy
locations far from the initial earthquake by spanning ocean basins.

0.3 URBAN IMPACT/IMPACT ON INFRASTRUC-

TURE
Given the large earthquake’s magnitude, the amounts of material damage were quite
minimal. This was caused in part by the region close to the rupture zone’s sparse infras-
tructural development. The earthquake had little effect on structures that had been built
to withstand shaking, with the majority of damage coming from tiny fault movements
or soil subsidence. Owner-built homes did not perform well. Adobe and masonry-built
homes performed poorly in the Maule and Bı́o Bı́o regions, whereas weak homes in the
Araucanı́a region were typically made of improper wood that had deteriorated over time.

A rough estimate states that around 40 percent of the homes in Valdivia were destroyed,
leaving 20,000 people without a place to live. Because they were not constructed utilizing
current earthquake engineering, concrete structures were the most severely harmed, in
some cases entirely collapsing. Conventional wooden homes survived better, but many of
them were unusable even if they did not fall down. Compared to homes on the lowlands,
which absorbed a lot of energy, elevated homes suffered significantly less damage. Several
city blocks in the city center with demolished buildings remained vacant until the 1990s
and 2000s, with some of them still being used as parking lots. Prior to the earthquake,
some of these blocks had contemporary concrete structures constructed in the wake of the
Great Valdivia Fire of 1909.
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0.4 CONCLUSION
A committee was established to address issues brought on by the 1960 Valdivia
earthquake. It kept going, developing strategies for national emergencies. Following the
Villarrica volcanic eruption in 1971, the committee was formally established as ONEMI
(Spanish for Ministry of Interior National Emergency Office) in 1974 after being given legal
authorization to operate as a separate government agency. Chile established stringent
anti-seismic building rules after being struck by the planet’s strongest earthquake ever
recorded back in 1960. Despite this, the country’s southern and central regions were
devastated by an earthquake of a magnitude of 8.8 in 2010. The tremor and the tsunami
that followed both claimed more than 500 lives. Around 200,000 houses were destroyed.
Once more, things had to shift. So that buildings could better withstand seismic waves,
building codes were changed. Buildings had a better chance of swaying with the shocks
and avoiding collapse if they had strong columns and weak beams. Planners came under
pressure to develop any new buildings farther away from the water.

In conclusion, no matter how prepared we are for the coming earthquakes that are
bound to happen, damages will always occur, and we can’t prevent that from happening.
The least we can do as Civil Engineers is to provide mitigation response to lessen its
impact on our infrastructure. In reality, people don’t die just because an earthquake
happened, it is when buildings and infrastructures that are affected by the earthquake,
collapses.

Morrás also states that it is important to emphasize that the earthquake led to a moral
decline in the populace as a result of the government’s tardy response to the disaster. The
lack of action led to chaos and disarray, which encouraged criminal activity like robberies
and looting at stores and malls. The necessity for food, water, and other necessities helped
to justify this action. As a result, another crucial lesson you must learn from the crisis is
the importance of institutions responding quickly and effectively.
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0.5 REFERENCES
On This Day: 1960 Chilean Earthquake and Tsunami. (2021, December 3). National
Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI). https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/news/day-
1960-chilean-earthquake-and-tsunami

What Chile did right - Chile. (2015, September 18). ReliefWeb. https://reliefweb.int/report/chile/what-
chile-did-right

Pallardy, Richard. ”Chile earthquake of 1960”. Encyclopedia Britannica, 8 Sep. 2022,

https://www.britannica.com/event/Chile-earthquake-of-1960. Accessed 19 March 2023.

Astroza I., M.; Lazo H., R. (2010). Estudio de los daños de los terremotos del 21 y
22 de mayo de 1960. Congreso chileno de sismologı́a e ingenierı́a antisı́smica. X jornadas
(in Spanish). Archived from the original on 5 November 2021. Retrieved 19 March 2023.

Terremoto de Valdivia Archived 2 February 2011 at the Wayback Machine, Icarito.

Johnston, Arch C.; Halchuk, Stephen (June–July 1993), ”The seismicity data base for the
Global Seismic Hazard Assessment Program”, Annali di Geofisica, 36 (3–4): 133–151, pp.
140, 142 et seq.