On Saturday, February 27, 2010 at 06:34 NZT (03:34 Local Time) a M8.8 earthquake struck central Chile, with the epicenter located 35 km offshore of the coast of Maule region (105 km NNE of Concepcion and 335 km SW of Santiago. The earthquake was followed by a tsunami that affected a 200 km long strip of Chilean coast. At the time of the earthquake, one of the project PhD student – Patricio Quintana Gallo was actually at Valparaiso, Chile. He was subsequently invited to join the NZSEE Reconnaissance Team to Chile two months after the event. Further information of that NZSEE Recon mission is available here.
On 30 September 2009 a Richter magnitude 7.6 earthquake occurred approximately 50 km offshore from the Indonesian city of Padang on the west coast of Sumatra. As part of an AusAID initiative, Jason Ingham spent eight days as part of a team conducting detailed structural assessments of damage to school buildings and medical/hospital buildings in the greater Padang region under the jurisdiction of the Australia – Indonesia Facility for Disaster Reduction (AIFDR). Approximately 300 school and 100 medical buildings were assessed during this time. From the data collected, it was possible to identify common structural defects as well as deduce systemic deficiencies in the overall design and construction process for the Padang region.
