Chile deployed many new anti-earthquake technologies

At 3:34 on February 27, 2010 in Chile, an 8.8-magnitude earthquake leveled houses, bridges and water pipes, killing 525 people and causing losses amounted to $ 30 billion. At the same time, the telephone network has become congested, causing millions of people to be unable to contact relatives and the authorities have also encountered many difficulties in giving warnings.

>>>Earthquake warning thanks to phone software

In the past two years, the country has suffered more than 40 earthquakes of magnitude greater than 6 Richter scale. Therefore, the people of the country have installed earthquake warning applications on smartphones to be easily accessible, providing real reports from social networks, aggregating information from forecasting agencies. in the world and identify dangerous areas on Google Maps. However, Chilean authorities want to do more, by applying existing technologies on a larger scale or promoting ideas that have never been tested in an earthquake situation.

Preserving buildings

One of the most fundamental and promising technologies is the seismic isolation system built by Sirve (Chile), which can help buildings stay intact while everything around them is broken. Huge steel structures will support buildings from below, acting like a car shock absorber. They operate independently of the vibrating ground and resist vibration, instead of leaving the building exposed. In addition, large concrete blocks with an average weight of 160 tons hanging inside the building can swing like a pendulum, balancing the vibrations of the ground, thereby stabilizing the structure. Building.

Sirve's seismic isolation system will not leave
Buildings destroyed like this. ( Photo: BBC)

Sirve claims this technology can reduce up to 90% of structural damage to buildings under 15 floors, and for buildings over 15 floors, this ratio is 50%. Evidence is that after the 2010 earthquake, all 13 buildings in Chile were built with Sirve's system, including the tallest building in the country with 52 floors in Santiago city, while over 370,000 houses were safe. another has been destroyed. Sirve said the demand for seismic isolation systems tripled last year and the Chilean government plans to apply the technology to housing construction for low-income people.

Provide clean water in disaster

Another major problem that arises after earthquakes is to supply water to residential communities, when water pipes are destroyed. The simple method of Tohl - a clean water distribution company based in Atlanta (USA) can solve this problem. A pipeline made of polyethylene, a flexible, transparent, waterproof and insulating synthetic resin, fitted to the water source, the other end is pulled by a helicopter and transported to the communities. Trapped between rubble. Unlike conventional water pipes, Tohl's pipes can be continuously towed to places far from 500 meters to several kilometers, low cost and short installation time, for example, placing a 1km long pipeline. It only takes a few minutes.

Emergency warning technology

When a city is shocked, the first thing people think of is their loved ones. But when people try to use landlines and mobile phones to communicate, the telephone network is often overloaded. This affects the government's warning. To solve this problem, the Chilean government imported an emergency warning technology in 2011.

The software developed by Israel's eVigilo company uses a geography-based warning system to help officials provide simultaneous warning information to computers, pagers and mobile phones as well as radio and television stations. Millions of people will be able to access the alert message in just a few seconds even though all phone networks are in a congested situation. This system, though not yet tested in real earthquakes, but Sirve company believes with other technologies, this technology can save many lives when disaster strikes.