Disaster experts praise Chile quake response

SANTIAGO, Chile — President Michelle Bachelet leaves office on Thursday with a chunk of her country in ruins — and her popularity in the clouds.

Despite complaints that aid was slow to reach the hungry and homeless, experts say that Chile's response to one of history's most powerful earthquakes has been a model for disaster recovery.

At first, the problems were all too obvious: Chile's navy and emergency preparedness office failed to issue a tsunami warning that might have saved hundreds of lives after the Feb. 27 quake, and Bachelet didn't order soldiers to impose order in the streets until after looting had spun out of control.

But experts say other smart moves — like insisting that foreign help meet specific needs, quickly patching up roads and having the military handle logistics — made it possible to deliver 12,000 tons of relief in just 10 days.

And despite extensive damage to hospitals, few additional lives have been lost since the tsunami retreated, leaving at least 497 dead and hundreds missing.

Chile's critical north-south highway was restored the day after the quake, with thick metal plates covering cracks, dump-truck loads of gravel filling collapsed pavement and more than a dozen fallen pedestrian overpasses quickly pushed aside. The patchwork repairs soon enabled an aid convoy of 100 tractor-trailers to make the eight-hour journey south from the capital to the most damaged cities.

"We were where we needed to be immediately," the socialist president said in a Chilean TV interview ahead of Thursday's inauguration of conservative billionaire Sebastian Pinera.

It was frustrating to have to make decisions based on incomplete information, Bachelet said: Seismographs were knocked offline when the power went out, the navy gave mixed signals on the tsunami, and she said there was no hint that looting would soon begin when she toured the disaster area hours after the quake. Chile clearly needs to improve its emergency communications and warning systems, she said.

But veterans of other disasters have been impressed by Chile's response.

"There is nothing more frustrating than getting aid somewhere and not seeing it delivered to the people who need it. Here, there is no aid that sits anywhere. It hasn't collected any dust. It's getting exactly to the people," said Col. Julio Lopez, who commands the the U.S. Air Force's 35th Expeditionary Airlift Squadron, which has been ferrying supplies and people in C-130 cargo planes between Chile's capital and Concepcion, the closest large city to the epicenter.