[Santiasco] Making plans to "evacuate"?

It has been a terrible month regarding the air quality in Santiago, but the predictions from http://aqicn.org/ for next week are even worse:

I feel constantly tired and headachy, a bit less so in the room with the air cleaning machine (a ionizer), various (three!) water fountains to humidify the air of the appartment, and recently purchased air cleaning plants, but it's not really idead to work and focus on doing research, which should be my main activity during the Chilean summer without teaching.

Some people lost their house to the fires, and among those who did not, there are still some in a worse position than mine: the air in the places closer to the forest fires is labelled as "Very Unhealty" by http://aqicn.org/.

If the predictions from http://aqicn.org/ concretized, I am planning to go to visit some friends on the coast. Viña del Mar is very tempting!

Evacuating is getting even more complicated because I had volunteered to receive in my appartment some people who lost their house to the fire... I will see. Maybe I can evacuate them with me :)

[Santiasco] Urban Promotors getting crazy with fires?

Santiago is, again, covered in smoke. According to AQICN, the air of the whole city of Santiago is "Unhealthy", and even some neighboring cities like Rancagua which usually escape the smog from regular polution are severely affected.

The local and international news are terse, talking about 12 fires in various regions, and incoming winds which make the fires harder to stop. Nobody mentions that the firefighers are all volunteers (no profesional), and in insuficient numbers (it appears they fought against the profesionalisation of the profession) with insuficient equipment (their equipment is either donated from foreign brigades or bought with donation money).

A coleague mentioned that the recent increase in the frequency of such fire is not as much due to more frequent drought but much more due to the increase in criminally started fires, by people paid by promoters who wish to build housing in this era of increased immigration in Chile. I could not find a reference to it in the news, but it does seem in the spirit of unbriddled liberalism which runs here... :(

[Santiasco] Chilean's air norms are the most laxist of Latin America

I discovered recently an article from 2015 comparing the norms of air quality in Latin America. It provides some interesting perspective about the air quality in Latin America:

every single country is have a different scale, with different conventions for the colors, concentration breakpoints and nomenclature.

It complemented my understanding of the particular situation of Santiago (i.e. it's not that Santiago produces more pollution than other cities, but that it cannot afford to produce pollution at the same level as other cities in the world):

For instance, for Santiago de Chile, it is both the topography formed by the Andes in the East preventing the pollution from dispersing latteraly, and the constant stream of air from the Hadley cell circulation which prevents the pollution from escaping upwards (creating an inverstion [sic] layer).

And it confirmed what I already observed, that the Chilean air quality standards are much more relaxed than the ones from the US.

But it is the following array which made this information more concrete for me:

The third and fourth row (range 100 to 200), labeled as "Regular" ("Usual") in Chile, receive labels such as "Unhealthy", "Muy Malo" ("Very Bad"), "Precaucion" ("Precaution"), "Inadecuado" ("Inadequate"), "Muito Ruim" ("Very Bad"). At this level of polution in Chile, NO MEASURES are taken to reduce polution (such measures start at the next level, "Alerta").

The reactions from Chileans with whom I shared the information follow two templates: people from low social levels are resigned and feel they can't do anything about the situation, while people from high social levels like to believe that they live in a place where the air quality is better (close to the sea, or high in the mountain) and advise me to do the same. Neither group believe in changing the situation :(

It's not only in Santiago that the air quality  is getting worse:  all over the world, cities are setting up norms to deal with air pollution and keep it at "reasonable" levels. The Chilean approach seems to be more about improving the "appearances" by changing the alert thresholds than about truly dealing with the problem. I wonder which effects such a policy will have on the life expectancy of the inhabitants of Santiago (and on mine)...

[Pollution] Difference between Chilean measures and international ones

As I was cleaning my bookmarks, I found one that I did not use for a long time, to the website from the Chilean government about the air quality. It was the occasion to compare the information it provides (based on the same data, from the same captors) to the website that I now use, aqicn.org:

The air, if not as bad as other times (the peaks of pollution in Santiago are from June to August, when it is winter in the South Hemisphere) is bad currently (there are fires in various communes), but the difference is already striking (see here for a comparison for all cities of Chile):

• On Wednesday, the air quality was "Moderate" by international standards, while completely "Good"by Chilean standard;
• on Thursday morning, the air was "Unhealthy for some" by international standards, while still "Good" by the standards of Santiago's administration; and 
  
• on Thursday evening, the air was "Unhealthy" by international standards, while still mostly "regular" by Chilean standard:
  
  

There is no way to know how much of this gap is due to ignorance, and how much is due to political scheming, but in the end the Chilean government is twice less demanding in air quality than international websites, judging one day's air as "good" when internationally it already one pr too levels worse than good, i.e. "moderate" or "Unhealthy for some" (the fact that "regular" is not "bueno" on the Chilean website would make for an another debate: on the international website it is only "moderate", not "regular", after "good").

And the gap between the two reports is increasing as the pollution gets worse...

[Travels] Back in Santiago

I am back in Santiago, Chile.
It is colder than in France (it is winter here) but not as cold as I expected: I came back home in Tee-shirt, my whool pullover in the backpack and my winter jacket at the office.

My eyes were etchy and I had a light headache, but I would rather blame the lack of sleep (4h in the plane) than the pollution : the air seemed reasonably clean on my first day back (even though there was this  HUGE column of smoke next to the airport : I assume it is water?). 

The university students have been on strike for the whole month that I was abroad, my preparations for a final exam / social event on the day after my return were not needed: we don't know when this will happen. I found surprising announcements on the public board! (I found Chile to be very conservative sexually speaking, hence my surprise and curiosity regarding this kind of announcements.) 

[Santiasco] This year will be worst than the previous one

They said last year that the winter 2015 was the worst since 1995. It seems to me that the winter 2016 will be worse: I already lost count of the number of alerta and pre Emergencias, and we are not even yet in Winter! 

I am glad that I am travelling in places with a better air, but a bit worried for my friends in Santiago and other cities of Chile: I never saw the "very unhealthy: tag before on this application:

Note: it is the very  first time that I see the label "hazardous":

Note also how the people from LAS CONDES might have the information that their air is "bueno" by Chilean standard when it is "unhealthy for some" (i. e.  children and elders should avoid any exertion)  by US standard...