Chile's Earthquake: Pro-active Disaster Management helps in Quick Recovery

Chile was located on the western side of South America. Its great vertical extension came along the world’s ‘Ring of Fire’ (Refer to Exhibit I for Ring of Fire bordering the Peru-Chile trench). The Ring of Fire was a zone that had experienced several volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. The major part of the ring stretched along the 25,000-mile rim of the Pacific Ocean, including the Pacific Coast of Chile. Chile’s coastline, which stretched over 2600 miles in the north-south direction, was dominated by the collision between the Nazca Plate – an oceanic tectonic plate – and the South American continent. The tectonic plates shifted constantly, riding on hot rock. The tectonic plates of the Pacific Ocean ground against the plates of the surrounding continent. In a process known as subduction, an edge of one tectonic plate pushed under another, causing volcanic eruptions and earthquakes...