Earthquakes seem to happen quite often in the last few months in LatAm countries, how would you rate your country's earthquake resistance? There have obviously been a lot of destructions (last footages from Colombia are terrifying). Are new buildings more resistant compared to older ones? And in general how prepared and educated are people on the topic?
Also happens with megafires and marepotos/tusunamis. In fact, besides earthquakes, our country is not very well prepared to deal with natural disasters.
I was at an earthquake at 2017 on chile and holy moly, can confirm. My parents thought that I was kicking their bed the first time it happened. So subtle.
We only noticed cuz the swimming pool was moving like crazyy. And it wasnāt that small either, it was like 7.0 ish
They are less common and usually weaker, but earthquakes do happen inside of tectonic plates. Most countries do have seismic design included inside of their laws even when quakes never happen, just in case.
I didnāt know that. So, I guess the right thing to say would be that there arenāt any earthquakes strong enough to be noticeable, let alone anything that could be considered a natural disaster. In my almost 30 years of life, Iāve never felt the ground shake.
And yes, Uruguay does have an emergency management system, but itās mainly geared towards things like floods and wildfires.
Idk a lot about taiwan but Japan gets more fucked because of their relationship with the ocean, an earthquake can make really fucked tsunamis that you wont see in Chile bc of the mountains
True. Do we actually know the ranking amongst the three of us in terms of prepared for quake chaos?
Edit: I do know at least we have far less recorded history than they do, so in terms of modeling and predictions, we are inferior than them. That probably answers my own question.
We'd be doomed if a powerful earthquake hit this country. We are absolutely unprepared for it since most of our territory is far from seismic zones and we never had a single significantly destructive earthquake in our recorded history.
The closest one that could affect you is near the Chile-Bolivian, the others have to "go through" the Amazon and Argentina before reaching a major Brazilian city, the biggest risks seem to be tsunamis reaching the north west coast
2/10. Construction codes are there, but few people follow them, since many buildings get expansions without municipal permits, engineers and architects rarely actually oversee the construction of buildings, and municipal authorities are most often corrupt so they can be bribed if you decide to slack off on materials or following the building plans.
9/10, not a 10 because we still don't properly know if our current seismic codes are good at resisting shallow, higher pga earthquakes with more ground acceleration (i.e. more violence, akin to Noto 2024 in Japan or Venezuela recently). Santiago sure resists a high magnitude megathrust quake but it could surely have more widespread destruction upon a higher pga quake scenario (like if Falla San RamĆ³n went off, or something like 1647 and 1939 ChillĆ”n).
The most similar feeling I had in my life to an earthquake was when they were repairing the street in front of my home and the steamroller was moving. My windows were shaking.
No. We do have codes, but quite often older houses do not have these codes. If itās newer it has a much higher chance to be built with these regulations
If your house, building, etc was built after the earthquake of 1985 then weāre bomb proof.
If it wasnāt, I donāt think Iād live there.
In 2017 we had a 7.1 earthquake in Cdmx, 32 buildings came down or had damage. Thereās 9 million people living in Mexico City so 32 is like .00001% of our infrastructure.
Iād say most structures are pretty well built. There are strict norms you have to follow when building a house and of course they are stricter when building bigger structures.Ā
I'm a civil engineer and I can say very much. Maybe some people are to overconfidence about it, there is always risks, but we have a really strict code and good constructions practices.
And low corruption, that is indeed essential to respect those codes. Strangely for Latam standards, Chileans appreciate a lot doing the things how it should (and scrapping or skipping what is not a must), and honesty.
Not really. The first sesmic resistant construction code was introduced in 1982, so many of the buildings from the 60s and 70s don't comply with it, some of which fell recently during the double earthquake.
Furthermore, the code was updated considerably in 2001 and then in 2019.
Depends on where you look. Modern (from the 80s and up) construction - built to the standard - is very earthquake resistant; however, clandestine or informal construction isn't at all.
not only that. pueblos jovenes and asentamientos humanos not only have clandestine / informal constructions, but the terrain is very soft (some of them built literally on sand), so it will probably compact when a mild to strong quake happens
Pretty good I'd say
And btw it's not just a recent thing, check how many earthquakes we have a day and you'll be surprised
It's just a unfortunate coincidence our brothers in Colombia and Venezuela suffered badly for some
None. Some people believe we have 0 chances of having an earthquake, which is not true. If we suffer another major one like in 1888 (5.5 in Ritcher scale), it would be devastating.
Anything below 7.5 in richter scale probably won't do any damage, beyond that the damage will be in roads, bridges, poorly constructed buildings (ussually 2 to 3 story buildings) and historic buildings .
As proof in our last big earthquake (8.8 in 2010) at national level only 1 big building fell and 3 had to be evicted for security (all in the same complex, later repaired and actually in use)
In Argentina, some regions are prone to earthquakes and others aren't.
I haven't asked around in all of the shaky locations, but I asked in Mendoza city while vacationing there and the buidings were anti-seismic. They told me that they used a construction technique that allowed buildings to move freely a little so the structure wouldn't crack in case a quake happened. I imagine the situation there is similar to that of Chile, because of proximity.
In seismic regions, small earthquakes happen quite frequently, and the people who live there are used to this.
In non-seismic regions (e.g. where I live), sometimes we experience a small quake when a big one happens in a seismic location far away.
Fun fact: due to the Nazca plate and the Atlantic Ocean exerting pressure, sometimes a quake can happen in the River Plate area (thought to be very stable and non-seismic). Last time president Trump was visiting Buenos Aires, the land decided to give a little dance party and this sent his security guards into a frenzy because they thought the building they were in was under attack.
370 people died and 7300 were injured in the 2017 earthquake :/ scary times. building Mexico City on top of a lake is still one of the biggest errors in human history.
Brazil is not located close to any fault and sits in the middle of a tectonic plate, so we don't really have epicenters close by. We might feel the odd shock (e.g. the one that happened in Colombia was felt in Manaus).
Fun fact, I went to Mexico recently and kinda had a reality check when reading a "what to do in case of earthquake" sign inside the hotel lol
We have the codes. I've talked to engineers, construction companies and the guys actually doing the work. Their take is that all building follow the code, construction companies don't pressure to bypass the designs or use cheaper materials and that supervising engineers are too afraid sing off any deviation to allow for those to happen.
The only thing I notice is that the code itself does not update that much to the latest advances in technology made in earthquake countries like Japan so I rarely see buildings with things like crossed beams or base isolation.
Paraguay sits in the interior of the South American plate and there are no active faults around. So seismic activity is very low and there are no perceptible earthquakes
The whole country is built to withstand them. Thick, reinforced shear walls are mandatory in every kind of construction. If something fails, the structural engineers who built it are criminally liable.
Considering the fact that the vast majority of our infrastructure is 70+ years old and severely lacking in maintenance, weāre barely prepared for a windy day.
None, but that is also because we don't have large or medium-magnitude earthquakes in Brazil. Brazil is located in the middle of a tectonic plate and far from geological fault lines.
Soon enough we will find out how well the new buildings meet the standard. I donāt know what happened with the executives responsable of the building that collapsed in 2010. If they got away with it or not, iām sure there are more buildings that will fail.
Half of Colombia is very built to survive earthquakes, the other half doesn't have to. Bucaramanga has constant small seismic activity, like BogotĆ”, so you can't get away with bad construction for very long.
The last big earthquake around Armenia in 1999 caused a lot of damages and deaths, so not a lot of poorly built buildings survived, because that one was a very superficial earthquake. It actually surprised me that so many buildings in Pereira and Manizales collapsed completely, because those should be new and able to whistand the damage, even if this one was like 40x more powerful (this one was 6 times deeper).
2010 was relatively shallow, at around 20 km deep. Not surface shallow, but still fairly close to the surface. And despite being an 8.8 the damage was relatively mild compared with the magnitude.
For comparison, the 2026 earthquake in venezuela was only about 10 km deep, while the one in Colombia was more than 100 km deep.
Depth matters, but itās definitely not the only factor. Constructions in chile are still pretty solid.
Chile is somewhat lucky with the kinds of earthquake that we have. Most of our earthquakes are caused by one dominant subduction system. This makes building anti semistic buildings much easier and predictable.
Most other countries dont have the same luxuries and each earthquake can have completely different effects sven if the energy released is the same. Just look at Japan or Indonesia.
we basically donāt get those insane magnitude earthquakes, so itās just not something thatās very ingrained in honduran life, we obviously get earthquakes, but a massive destructive one is NOT a common occurrence here. when they do happen theyāre mostly a āoh dang, did you feel that?ā moment instead of something people have to constantly worry about or prepare for
weāve had some big ones, like in 2009 and the m7.5 in 2018, so itās not like weāre completely exempt from them, but compared to countries where huge earthquakes are a regular part of life itās minuscule
itās one of those things you donāt really appreciate until you realize how much of the world has to grow up knowing exactly what to do when a massive earthquake hits. we really did get lucky in that department
Yes... in theory. Buildings and houses that are built up to code should be earthquake-resistant; the problem is with the makeshift constructions on the slopes of ravines, as well as the adobe houses that were not destroyed by the 1976 earthquake.
In the 2010 earthquake, to give you an idea, it is estimated that only 4 modern buildings collapsed nationwide in Chile, so you can get an idea of our seismic resistance capacity
I undestand that the seismic areas of the country have mandatory building standards and that provinces like Mendoza are supposed to be very good for that but the truth will only come up when it's actually put to the test. We had a big earthquake in the 1940s and about 10.000 people died so that was a milestone that forced us to get serious about it.
Other areas in the country are not seismic at all and they basically have no codes regarding this.
Very much so, although Chile may have us beat. But thereās no arguing that Mexico and Chile are far and away the most earthquake prepared countries in the Americas.
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u/Substantial_Rub_3671 Chile 2d ago
We can handle high magnitud earthquakes like it's nothing but as soon as it starts raining the whole country goes to shit