Chile revises earthquake casualties down

As announcements of government screw-ups go, this is a pretty welcome one:  The death toll from last weekend’s earthquake in Chile has been revised sharply downwards, generating further criticism of the muddled official response to the crisis. As powerful aftershocks rattled the area around the second city of Concepción today, officials said that 279 dead ...

By , a former associate editor at Foreign Policy.

As announcements of government screw-ups go, this is a pretty welcome one: 

As announcements of government screw-ups go, this is a pretty welcome one: 

The death toll from last weekend’s earthquake in Chile has been revised sharply downwards, generating further criticism of the muddled official response to the crisis.

As powerful aftershocks rattled the area around the second city of Concepción today, officials said that 279 dead people had been identified. The death toll had previously been put at 802, but officials said that figure included people listed as missing but not confirmed dead. Some bodies have yet to be identified, so the 279 figure is likely to rise.

Chile‘s two main newspapers said the government had revised the death toll in the hard-hit Maule region down from 587 to 316.

As hard as Concepcion’s been hit, 279 seems like mercifully few given the severity of the quake.

Joshua Keating was an associate editor at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @joshuakeating

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