Word: chiles
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Precariously perched between the towering Andes and the Pacific, the elongated Republic of Chile runs like a rind along the western coast of South America from the tropics to Cape Horn. Averaging only about 125 miles in width, the country is so long (2,661 miles) that, if draped across Europe, it would stretch from Moscow to Madrid. To compensate for its unwieldy shape, nature has given it a variety of riches: underneath its parched yellow soil in the desolate northern region lie the world's most valuable deposits of nitrate and the second largest known deposits of copper...
...return for these riches, mountainous Chile pays a steep price. Situated at one end of the great Pacific earthquake arc* that sweeps around from Borneo and the Philippines, through Japan, Alaska, the U. S. Pacific Coast and down through central and western South America to the Cape, Chile shares honors with Japan as the shakiest region on earth. Of 9,000 big & little quakes & tremors recorded every year, fully 21% occur in Chile. Seismic observers estimate that during the past three centuries Chile has had on the average a serious quake every three years. Last week she was hit again...
Broken communication lines, uprooted roads and rail tracks cut the area off from the rest of Chile. Not until amateur radio operators sent out terse pleas for help, did Santiago, where only slight tremors were felt, learn of the damage. At dawn a Government plane headed south to survey the stricken city. What the observers saw sent them speeding back to Santiago...
...only had Chillán been destroyed; the full force of the quake had torn up a vast, 450-mile-long segment of the narrow nation. Some 20 towns and villages throughout Chile's richest agricultural and mining regions had been leveled. At Concepión, Chile's third largest city, 70% of the buildings were on the ground. Chillán, hardest hit, looked from the air like a mammoth anthill overturned. Its church spires and jagged masonry protruded through the debris. Its surviving residents scrabbled in the ruins for the dead and injured. In the countryside...
...British cruisers, in Chilean waters for a friendship visit, began transporting medical supplies, evacuating refugees and injured. Greatest need was for medical supplies to prevent the spread of tetanus, typhoid, check gangrene. From their Canal Zone base, two U. S. Army bombers roared south loaded with serums. From Chile's neighbor, Argentina, started a fleet of rescue planes and trainloads of supplies...