Chile Sacks Naval Scientist Over Tsunami Alert

(March 6) – Chile has sacked the head of its Navy's oceanographic service over his failure to issue a national tsunami alert amid barreling waves believed to have killed hundreds in the moments after an 8.8-magnitude earthquake one week ago.

Port captains put out their own local warnings after last Saturday's temblor, but a nationwide one never came. Other countries along South America's coast and across the Pacific as far as Japan and Australia put out warnings within minutes, but those ended up being overstated and bigger than normal waves never materialized.

The only spot to experience tsunami-style surge was near the quake's epicenter south of the capital Santiago – the very place where no warning was issued. Residents of a small island on the mouth of the Maule River, just off the seaside resort of Constitucion, reported being swept away by a 30-foot wall of water. In another port city, Talcahuano, four tsunamis killed nine people and left the downtown area uninhabitable. Government officials believe the tsunamis killed at least as many people as the earthquake.

The Chilean government has revised down the total death toll from more than 800 to 452. Deputy Interior Minister Patricio Rosende told reporters Friday that that's the number of bodies which have been identified by relatives. His comments were carried by several news agencies.

Hundreds of residents are still missing.

Chile's government also issued a statement Friday saying that Commander Mariano Rojas, head of the Chilean navy's Oceanography Service, has been removed from his post "immediately" because of his failure to provide a clear warning of the tsunami. The head of the navy has also launched an investigation into "the circumstances of the decision process after the natural catastrophe hit the country," the statement said.

The Oceanography Service, along with the country's emergency response unit, spearheaded the government's official response to the earthquake, which also left an estimated two million people homeless.

In a minute-by-minute reconstruction of what happened after the quake hit at 3:34 a.m. local time one week ago today, the Miami Herald reveals a deluge of conflicting messages to and from the government in the moments after the ground stopped shaking. A tsunami alert was placed and then lifted several times as officials deliberated about whether to issue a protective warning, or whether it would scare people and lead to unnecessary panic. Police patrolling neighborhoods even tried to calm nerves by telling residents no tsunami waves were on the way, the paper reported.

Just two and a half minutes after the quake, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii received automatic signals from Chilean seismic stations and floating pressure gauges in the ocean off Chile's coast. "We knew it was a really big one,'' Barry Hirshorn, the geophysicist on duty in Hawaii, told the Herald.

Less than 10 minutes later the Hawaii facility sent this message to the Chilean government, in all-capital letters: "An earthquake of this size had the potential to generate a destructive tsunami that can strike coastlines near the epicenter within minutes and more distant coastlines within hours. Authorities should take appropriate action." The message also gave estimated times that tsunamis could reach specific cities on the Chilean coast.

Still, no official warning was broadcast to the Chilean people.

The Hawaii-based warning system is run by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It worked well in part because it was beefed up after a 1960 earthquake in Chile that sent a tsunami across the Pacific and killed 200 people in Japan. The system was upgraded again after the 2004 South Asian tsunami that killed about 300,000 people.

But the system broke down when it came to Chile's government. As early as a day after the disaster, military officials admitted an "error of diagnosis" and said they had transmitted "very unclear information" to President Michelle Bachelet on whether to lift or maintain a tsunami alert along the coast. On Thursday, President-elect Sebastián Piñera, who takes office on March 11, said his incoming administration would undertake "a profound modernization" of the tsunami warning system.

Still, the suggestion that the government failed to adequately warn people has stoked anger and led to a blame game. "People are dead as a result of the government's mistakes,'' Miguel Rivera, a city councilman in the coastal town of Hualpén, told the Herald. "Sending out the word in time would have saved a lot of lives.''

The head of Chile's navy, Admiral Edmundo González, acknowledged some of the blame in an interview with TV Chile. "We share that responsibility,'' he said. The navy was "not very clear'' in describing the tsunami threat to the president, he added.

Responding to those comments, Bachelet told various reporters Friday she found González's statement "very manly,'' but said now is not the time for finger pointing. "Everybody's a general after the war,'' she said.