Head of Chile's emergency office resigns amid quake criticism

Mar 11, 2010, 9:36 GMT

   Santiago - The head of Chile's National Emergency Office, which has been accused of responding too slowly to a deadly magnitude-8.8 earthquake nearly two weeks ago, resigned a day before a new president is sworn in.

   Carmen Fernandez quit Wednesday but also defended her performance.

   'No country is capable of functioning at 100-per-cent efficiency and effectiveness in the first minutes after a catastrophe - not one, not even the United States after Hurricane Katrina,' she said.

   Fernandez's office and the navy's Hydrolographic and Oceanographic Service have been trading blame as to who was responsible for the government's failure to issue a tsunami warning after the February 27 quake, which killed nearly 500 people.

   Even as tsunami waves were ravaging coastal areas in much of Chile, wiping out entire villages, the service's director, Mariano Rojas, was reportedly telling the government that there was no threat of tidal waves. As a result, Rojas was fired Friday.

   The government's response to the quake has dealt a blow to the popularity of outgoing socialist President Michelle Bachelet, who leaves office Thursday to make way for conservative Sebastian Pinera.

   The military took two days to mobilize 10,000 men to the areas worst-affected by the disaster and three days to put a brake on mass looting while the government took four days to get food to some villages.

   Bachelet's government defended Fernandez with Interior Minister Edmundo Perez Yoma saying she had done 'great work' and some of the criticism directed at her had been 'unwarranted.'