Home-ownership dreams crumble with cracked walls in Chile

Mar 3, 2010, 20:57 GMT

   Santiago- The around 500,000 homes across Chile that suffered serious damage in Saturday's devastating quake were by Wednesday a nightmare for homeowners and construction firms alike.

The walls that collapsed as a result of the quake pulled down with them the dreams of thousands of Chileans who thought they had attained the old longing for home-ownership.

'This is a joke,' said a resident of Maipu, in northeastern Santiago, as she pointed to the floor which still holds her apartment.

   The concrete mass was leaning very visibly and looked nothing like the safe homes that owners had been promised.

'It is unacceptable, but we have to investigate what kind of mistake there was. I have a feeling that it is a soil issue, but we have to look at that closely,' Sergio Contreras, vice president of the Chilean Association of Engineers, told the German Press Agency dpa when asked about this particular building.

Although the associations of engineers and architects stress that Chile largely held on well in the face of Saturday's massive quake - which measured 8.8 on the Richter scale - and that regulations on anti-seismic construction saved thousands of lives, more and more buildings are being singled out for demolition across the country.

'It is construction firms that are responsible,' Chilean Housing Minister Patricia Poblete has said time and again. 'Residents have rights, and they must ensure that those rights are respected.'

Construction firms will have to account for their buildings' quality standards, particularly in projects that were completed less than 10 years ago, Contreras stressed.

'In plans, buildings look perfect, but you see that the same construction firm has other faults. There is then a common denominator that indicates responsibility,' Patricio Cross, national director of the Chilean Association of Architects, told dpa.

A collapsed 14-floor building in central Concepcion - the second- largest city in the country, and the worst-affected by the disaster - has become a symbol of quake damage. While rescue teams worked night and day - when not hampered by aftershocks - to rescue likely survivors from under the rubble, experts tried to identify what led to the collapse.

'There may be mistakes in the execution of the project, to save on material or due to violations of the original plan. But that is something that we will have to analyze more thoroughly,' Cross said.

   Architects, engineers and fire department officials were assessing structures to reassure anxious residents. As they awaited the go- ahead on returning home, people pitched tents on the streets before the cracked walls of their houses, on cracked concrete ground and amid broken window panes and half-fallen doors.

Insurance companies have estimated that they will need close to 2.5 billion dollars to meet claims on earthquake policies.

   'We will have to draw lessons from this,' Cross said. 'I hope that with more surveillance this will not happen again.'

The owners of damaged buildings were less reflective.

'They are going to have to pay for this. All our dreams crumbled down,' one woman said.

The mix of rage and disappointment tinted the voices of thousands of people, as they went about the task of rebuilding their lives away from the homes they paid for and always wanted.