While Haiti is still in a state of shock and left to pick up its pieces after its grim earthquake, another one, measuring a magnitude of 8.8 on the Ritcher scale, strikes the Maule region of Chile in South America. Tremors were felt as far as the south of Peru and 53 countries were issued tsunami warnings. A tsunami, about 2.4m high, was recorded in the sea of Valparaíso, Chile. The country has now confirmed the deaths of 723 people. The earthquake was so powerful that it shortened the length of the day by 1.26 microseconds and the earth's axis moved by 3 inches or 2.7 miliarcseconds. Despite the fact that the country had expressed that there was no need for international aid, many countries, including Singapore, responded by sending humanitarian aid. Shortly after the quake, public disorder and looting had started. 4 hours after the quake, Chilean President Michelle Bachelet expressed that Chile did not need international aid yet in spite of the fact that about two million people have been affected by the quake with more than 500,000 houses completely damaged. It was a selfish act as the President did not completely comprehend what her citizens were experiencing and it required just a mere "yes" to allow humanitarian aid to reach all those who were suffering, whether emotionally or physically. Life was fragile for the Chileans and within a matter of seconds, somebody would die. Luckily, humanitarian aid had started arriving the next day.
(This is unrelated to the blog post above but some people have started speculations that the recent earthquakes were caused by a research program funded by the US Air Force, the US Navy, the University of Alaska and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.) For more information, do a Google search.
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