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Academics from the University of Chile warned about the risks of building on the San Ramón fault, what is active and what can affect more than 1.7 million people that inhabit the area, given its seismic potential that could be higher than that of 27-F, according to what they said.
55 percent of the surface of the San Ramón fault is today built as part of the exponential growth that Santiago has had in the last four decades.
Gabriel Easton, researcher at the Risk and Disaster Reduction Program at the University of Chile, that the San Ramón fault crosses all the communes located at the foot of the mountain front, in the foothills of Santiago, along more than 25-30 km, and even 50 km if Pirque and Lo Barnechea are also considered, deepening to about 10-12 km in the earth’s crust.
“We are currently developing a Fondecyt project (1190734), on urban planning at risk of the San Ramón Falla, with which we are pinpointing your location even more from high-resolution topographic data LiDAR and the forthcoming realization of new paleoseismological trenches. Every time, the information we collect confirms its importance as an active geological structure, capable of generating cortical earthquakes and with the possibility of rupture at the surface, “explained Easton.
With this background, the researchers warn about the risk of building on the San Ramón fault. Until 1960 the city of Santiago was planned under the central valley, but in 1979 that conception changed, starting with the expansion of the developable territory towards the Andean foothills, with a growing development on the fault.
Thus, today the communes of Las Condes, La Reina, Peñalolén, La Florida and Puente Alto are on this fault.
In four decades, Professor Easton details, “the growth of the population that inhabits the communes through which the fault passes changed from about 500 thousand to more than 1.7 million people; of them, the population living directly on the potential rupture zone, in the event of a major earthquake, would be estimated to be several tens of thousands of people “.
The “It is necessary that the Metropolitan Regulatory Plan of Santiago (PRMS) and the communal ones consider the San Ramón fault because it is urgent to prevent it from continuing to build directly on it, regardless of when the next major earthquake with a shallow rupture will occur. “
In the same sense, “it is also necessary that the seismic regulations (NCH433) incorporate this and other geological faults, assuming that earthquakes will occur in active structures, because in faults of this type, earthquakes occur much more widely spaced in time than, for example, those of subductionTherefore, their probability of occurrence is lower, but they do occur anyway and their potential impact may be much greater locally, “Easton warned.
Sonia Perez, an academic from the Faculty of Social Sciences and current vice president of Student and Community Affairs, said that “urban planning should provide this information so that people can make autonomous decisions about where and how they want to live. In the area you have to live with risk and that implies having community strategies to deal with the problems that an earthquake would cause. Strategies that cannot be planned if where and how we are exposed to the threat are not informed “.
In this regard, the academic from the Department of Architecture and principal investigator of the Fondecyt 1190734 project, Jorge Inzulza, considers that in terms of planning it is a multiscale and multidimensional issue where each commune has its own regulatory plan and each commune should incorporate this geological risk, for which the coordination of the Santiago Metropolitan Regulatory Plan plays a fundamental role in this matter.
“Urban planning should incorporate it into urban planning instruments at the local, intercommunal and also operational levels. There could be short-term actions, such as mitigation measures, coercion or collaborations between municipalities, to generate evacuation systems or civic education and resilience designs so that people know more about this geological risk, to reduce fear and fear and increase the security of how to face this risk in case of detonated, in case of having to evacuate, which are the most suitable places, among others “, concluded the specialist.
