Where could the next big earthquake happen in Chile?

It was 3:34 a.m. on February 27, 2010, and Chileans began to feel a new earthquake, which they were already used to. But soon it started to gain a lot of strength, the seconds started to feel longer and everyone already knew it was a different move.

They were experiencing the power of the Maule earthquake, as it was later called, which had a magnitude of 8.8 on the Richter scale and was recorded as one of the largest in the modern history. 500 people died and more than 800,000 were injured or left homeless.

The material and emotional damage and loss was extensive, causing many to wonder if such an event could be repeated. And while science doesn’t have a clear answer, since it’s impossible to predict with certainty when, there are pattern studies that can provide insight into risk areas where another major earthquake could hit the country. .

“That does not mean that it will happen tomorrow,” begins to explain Luis Donoso, seismologist and academic in applied geophysics at the Universidad del Desarrollo. The third . “However, the area that has the greatest potential to have the greatest magnitude above 8, 8 and something is the Atacama. Like the 1922 earthquake.”

But the specialist does not mention this possible prediction without recalling an “embarrassing” anecdote that science has experienced. Much of the scientists expected that in 2014 in Iquique there would be a “super hyper mega earthquake” that would erupt from Tocopilla to the border with Peru, but the movement broke in the middle , leaving all the conspiracy theories in nothing. .

“They hit an 8.2 magnitude earthquake and everyone was expecting a 9.4, 9.5, a beast, but it was really small (compared to what we thought) .” In fact, since it didn’t “break” that much, an area north of Iquique, which is a little deep in Peruvian territory, between the area of ​​the break and Tocopilla, was expecting “something eight points earthquakes” which, to date, have not occurred.

This experiment, according to Donoso, does nothing more than show that even if there are patterns, “most likely it will not coincide as expected.”

That said, and returning to the risk that the Atacama has of being the next area affected by a major earthquake, according to the study Interseismic Coupling, Segmentation and Mechanical Behavior of the Central Chile Subduction Zoneof the French Marianne Métois, Anne Socket and Christophe Vigny, there are certain patterns that reveal a possible big break in the sector.

“We have an 8.4, he’s there, but we don’t know if he’s going to break everything or if he’s going to break part of it, between Chañaral and La Serena,” Donoso says of the article, which clearly shows that The places mentioned include a rupture zone, that is, a point inside the Earth that breaks and generates an earthquake.

“When the entire potential area is fractured, an earthquake of a magnitude associated with the size of that area is generated. This means that if it is a large area, it will be a large earthquake On the other hand, when only a fraction of this zone is fractured, the magnitude of the earthquake generated is lower than the expected maximum,” he adds.

In this line, the coupling, i.e. how tightly the plate is locked and with what power it can break, is maximum in the Atacama, in the northern and southern zones of the 1922 break.

“It’s the work of people who are at the frontier of knowledge. It’s very difficult to find someone who has more experience in this”, specifies the specialist. “Can I establish where it breaks? Yes, where yes. But when? It’s totally out of the question. human limit.

“No. And I don’t think he’ll be able to either,” Donoso replies to The third . “The basic reason is that artificial intelligence searches and associates patterns, but these patterns are phenomena that have a certain frequency. But when the frequency at the seismic level is not stable and has a variability of several years, it stops to be a role model,” he explains.

To give an example, the seismologist recalls the great earthquakes in the central zone of Chile: in 1575, 1657, 1730, 1822, 1906 and 1985. At first glance, it seems that there is a tendency, however, “when we does the right numbers, he realizes that the average is 70, but he can increase 20 more or subtract 20 less”.

But what the AI ​​would do with that data is say that since the last one was in 1985, “you have to put 70 years into it, so the next big earthquake in Chile would be in 2045.”

Despite the technology’s potential, Donoso can’t help but remember a professor he had in college who always told an anecdote when the launch of programmable calculators was all the rage in the 1980s. teacher said these devices “add up very fast, but so fast that if it took me half an hour to make a complex calculation wrong, now I’d make the same mistake in two minutes.”

“The only advantage is that I can make so many mistakes in half an hour that at some point I’ll find the solution, but it’s not that the calculator will solve the problem for me.”

This is the seismologist’s vision of AI applied to his field, and above all, to the eternal uncertainty of being able to predict an earthquake with science: a calculator that only helps to make mistakes faster.

“According to the AI, we should all be shaken by now.”

Pedro Encina, the man behind the Santiago Nostalgic story, where he keeps more than 17,000 historic archival photographs, added a collection of the devastating effects of the 1922 earthquake and tsunami in the Atacama region.

“Most likely something similar will happen. I mean something in physical magnitude, not in magnitude of damage, but we will still have damage, ”warns the seismologist.

And it is that perhaps, when there are earthquakes that are part of the daily life of Chileans, the risks that a stronger blow can have are left aside, a sort of permanent state of denial.

“If people don’t know what happened, it’s hard for them to realize, because disasters, in my experience, last a little less than a generation,” says the expert, recalling her children, who says most of them have already erased memories of the 2010 earthquake.

But beyond feeling fear, it’s about being prepared. That this earthquake, which was felt at 3:34 in the morning, which seemed to be one more, and which was not foreseeable, is not as devastating, as far as possible.