Day 6 – Chile Earthquake 2010 – Tsunami Damage
Tsunami Damage in Talcahuano
On Friday morning we visited the small fishing community of Talcahuano that suffered severe devastation due to the tsunami. The town is not very far from our hotel. Even though we arrived almost two weeks after the earthquake and tsunami, the evidence of destruction is still pretty evident. Cleaning activities are proceeding but it will take a long time for things to get back to normal.
- It appears the water reached a level of 4 to 6 ft. on average, but the water mark on other buildings was higher than that.
- Many fishing boats were tossed around pretty far into the town. The fishing boat shown in the pictures with some of us was probably 300-500 ft. from the ocean.
- We visited a large fire station that is fairly close to the water. The building was a “community center” that included a ballroom and sleeping quarters for three companies or battalions. Remarkably, the building suffered minor damage. The structure consists of several additions but it is a concrete building for the most part. There is a large open atrium built with a steel space frame. Damage was mostly to pounding due to inadequate seismic joints, stairs separation from the supports, cracking of infill masonry walls, cracking of beam-column joints and nonstructural damage.
- The next significant structure we visited is “La Tortuga” (“The Turtle”), which is a medium size sports arena adjacent to a multi-story concrete building. The arena was built with concrete columns and beams. The roof is very interesting since it is made of steel beams with a system of tension rods. In addition, the diaphragm appears to be plywood supported by a grid of wood blocking. There was only minor structural damage consisting of some concrete cracking due to pounding. Water flooded the arena and at the time of our visit, the water level was still about 2-3 ft.
- We also visited a school that faced the ocean directly and had several phases. The older portion of the school was under renovation and there is also a new wing under construction. In general, the older portion did fine except for some URM damage at the upper level. The new construction showed cracking of concrete shear walls. Interestingly enough, some of the detailing and quality of construction in general wasn’t of great quality.
- Next was a large shipyard where the Chilean Navy has its ships and submarines built. There are large dockyards and maintenance/storage buildings. Vintage of the buildings is fairly old with some concrete buildings dating back to 1930. There was significant damage to some buildings but the most dramatic damage appears to be related to the partial failure of the seawall.
Video footage of damage from tsunami after the Chile earthquake(below)
Video footage of “La Tortuga” (“The Turtle”), medium size sports arena (below)
