Chilie's Earthquake
Chile is unfortunately no stranger to earthquakes. A quake similar to
Saturday's struck almost exactly the same part of Chile on February 20, 1835 --
almost exactly 175 years ago.
On that occasion, the young English naturalist and geologist Charles Darwin
was in Chile as part of his voyage on HMS Beagle. The 1835 earthquake has been
estimated as magnitude 8.5, whereas that of February 27, 2010, has been measured
as 8.8.
The earthquake of 1835 occurred around 11 a.m. and lasted about two minutes.
The main shock destroyed much of Concepción in just six seconds. There were
aftershocks for several weeks and three tsunamis, each one larger than the last,
starting about half an hour after the earthquake and bringing further
devastation.
Darwin was on shore near Valdivia, 200 miles south of Concepción, during the
quake and recorded in his diary:
"I was on shore & lying down in the wood to rest myself. It came on
suddenly & lasted two minutes (but appeared much longer). The rocking was
most sensible; the undulation appeared both to me & my servant to travel
from due East. There was no difficulty in standing upright; but the motion made
me giddy. I can compare it to skating on very thin ice or to the motion of a
ship in a little cross ripple. ... An earthquake like this at once destroys the
oldest associations; the world, the very emblem of all that is solid, moves
beneath our feet like a crust over a fluid; one second of time conveys to the
mind a strange idea of insecurity, which hours of reflection would never
create."
The Beagle, with Darwin aboard, reached Concepción on March 4. The
devastation there was appalling. Darwin called it "the most awful yet
interesting spectacle I ever beheld." The entire city lay in ruins. The
cathedral was shattered and wreckage and debris lined the coast.
Darwin spent the next weeks investigating the effects of the earthquake. He
found that rocks lined with recent marine shells were now elevated above the
tide. The island of Santa Maria was raised an average of about 3 meters (9
feet).
Combining his own observations with those of many local people, Darwin
attempted to reconstruct the event and to understand why it had occurred. He
found that three volcanoes had erupted along the Chilean coast at about the same
time as the earthquake.
Saturday's struck almost exactly the same part of Chile on February 20, 1835 --
almost exactly 175 years ago.
On that occasion, the young English naturalist and geologist Charles Darwin
was in Chile as part of his voyage on HMS Beagle. The 1835 earthquake has been
estimated as magnitude 8.5, whereas that of February 27, 2010, has been measured
as 8.8.
The earthquake of 1835 occurred around 11 a.m. and lasted about two minutes.
The main shock destroyed much of Concepción in just six seconds. There were
aftershocks for several weeks and three tsunamis, each one larger than the last,
starting about half an hour after the earthquake and bringing further
devastation.
Darwin was on shore near Valdivia, 200 miles south of Concepción, during the
quake and recorded in his diary:
"I was on shore & lying down in the wood to rest myself. It came on
suddenly & lasted two minutes (but appeared much longer). The rocking was
most sensible; the undulation appeared both to me & my servant to travel
from due East. There was no difficulty in standing upright; but the motion made
me giddy. I can compare it to skating on very thin ice or to the motion of a
ship in a little cross ripple. ... An earthquake like this at once destroys the
oldest associations; the world, the very emblem of all that is solid, moves
beneath our feet like a crust over a fluid; one second of time conveys to the
mind a strange idea of insecurity, which hours of reflection would never
create."
The Beagle, with Darwin aboard, reached Concepción on March 4. The
devastation there was appalling. Darwin called it "the most awful yet
interesting spectacle I ever beheld." The entire city lay in ruins. The
cathedral was shattered and wreckage and debris lined the coast.
Darwin spent the next weeks investigating the effects of the earthquake. He
found that rocks lined with recent marine shells were now elevated above the
tide. The island of Santa Maria was raised an average of about 3 meters (9
feet).
Combining his own observations with those of many local people, Darwin
attempted to reconstruct the event and to understand why it had occurred. He
found that three volcanoes had erupted along the Chilean coast at about the same
time as the earthquake.
Darwin
The greatest scientist in English History!