The city of Valdivia is located in the south of Chile, 840 km from the country’s capital Santiago. Valdivia has become recently the capital of the new region de los Ríos. The name of Valdivia comes from the Spanish conqueror Pedro de Valdivia, who founded the city on February 9th of 1552. In 1820 the Spanish troops were defeated by the Chilean Navy commanded by Lord Cochrane, who used clever tactical military manoeuvres to capture the forts of Corral, Niebla, Mancera and finally the city of Valdivia. During the nineteenth century there was an important immigration of people from Germany. Today’s population is about 400.000 people. The weather is humid and chilly due to an annual average rain of 2.000 mm and an average temperature of 11º C, which occur mostly during autumn and winter. However, the weather during summer and particularly during January is mild and even warm with temperatures up to 25ºC.

Valdivia is famous for the nice promenades along the rivers Calle-Calle and Valdivia. These rivers together with the rivers Cau-Cau, Cruces, Angachilla, Tornagaleones and Naguilán form an incredible network of navigable rivers, where it is possible to make journeys in equipped boats contemplating the beautiful scenery, eating or even dancing aboard.

 

A series of strong earthquakes hit the south of Chile in 1960, starting with a 7.5 magnitude Richter the 21st of May affecting seriously Arauco, Concepción and Talcahuano. It was believed that other event like this would not be possible to occur for a long time. Nevertheless, the afternoon of May 22nd, an even more devastating earthquake of magnitude 9.5 Richter destroyed Valdivia and many other cities in the south. Minutes later, a Tsunami, with waves reaching 10 m stroked Corral, Niebla and Mancera, causing considerable damage. The total event caused more than 4000 deaths. One of the most serious aftermaths of the earthquake was the clogging of the Riñihue lake, that raised its level, flooding and destroying an important area of the region. Around 60% of the urban area of the city was destroyed, and the monetary losses were calculated at the time in US$500 million dollars.

This has been the most catastrophic seismic event occurred in Chile in the twentieth century, with a fault rupture of more than 1000 km length and 250 km wide, with a fault displacement of 20 to 30 meters. The tectonic subsidence was of 1.5 m in the area of Valdivia, while in the extremes of Arauco and Chiloé the ground level raised between 1 m and 2 m.

 

 

 

The geography suffered considerable changes such as appearance and disappearance of islands, variation of the shoreline, river courses and river mouths were modified, landslides and volcanic eruptions.

The importance of the soil was clear in the behaviour of some structures in order to withstand the shaking. A lot of settlements were observed in footings, rotation of foundations in bridges and water tanks. Landslides were triggered and liquefaction of many sites was observed and identified as the cause of collapse of some structures.

The large Andes mountains range throughout Chile and the presence of many active volcanoes form an important amount of soils from volcanic origin, which have a different morphology, depending on the aging of the soil and its deposition mechanism. These types of soils have in general a different behaviour from those found in classical Geology and Soil Mechanics. This difference is explained by the presence of allophanic minerals found in the colloidal fraction of soils, which are very susceptible to perturbations.

 

The area in itself is very particular, since there is a unique interaction among sandy and clayey deposits, with deposits of volcanic ashes. Moreover, there are deposits of peat and organic soils together with sandstones locally called as hualves and cancahua, respectively.

Valdivia is connected to the rest of Chile by the South 5 motorway and its airport, Pichoy, is located 32 km to the north of the city, with the possibility of national and international flights. There are also motorways to the main lakes, mountains and rainforest of the south of Chile.

 

The city is a beautiful attraction for national and international tourists, because of its exclusive natural beauties, culinary and tourist features, being a platform to enter the entire Patagonia of Chile and its overwhelming natural landscapes. It is recommended to eat seafood in the Mercado, drink the local beer Kunstmann in the brewery and buy local chocolate. It is worthwhile visiting the Teja island, where is the Austral University next to a botanic garden.

 

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