I-Search+by+Ali

By Ali Saad ** Part I--What I already know about my topic ** A few weeks ago, Chile had its most recent earthquake. An earthquake is when you two of earth's plates slide past or bump into each other. The Earth has many small earthquakes all the time but this particular earthquake was very severe. Earthquakes are measured on a sale of 1-10 where ten is the most severe and 1 is the least severe. This earthquake was a magnitude of 8.8. This number is very high, even higher than that of Haiti which killed more than 200,000 people. The people in Chile were more fortunate than the people in Haiti, though. They had experienced earthquakes before and were prepared to face them. Therefore, there were 65% less deaths in Chile than in Haiti or 70,000 people in Chile died instead of a whopping 200,000 deaths. The earthquake also happened near the coast and fortunately, most people lived inland and away from the deadly shore. People also knew what to do in case of emergencies and how to handle problems.
 * Chile Earthquake **

After hearing about the earthquakes and all the deaths, it's easy to wonder, did everyone die at the time actually die from the earthquake or whether there was suicides from what had occurred or from loss of property? How did the government respond to all these deaths? Did the government take firm control of __everything__ or did it just lay back and hide in the shadows of all the corruption? How did the government treat survivors?
 * Part II--What I Want to Find Out **

Not only is my interest in how the government ran after the earthquake, I am also interested in how the survivors managed to get by. Did they have enough food or did they starve to death? Where did the homeless survivors go? Did they just live on the streets? What the survivors in power do? What did desperate people who needed food do? Was the economy affected by the tragic accidents? Did recovery occur and if it did, how fast was it?

__Day 1__ First, I went to Diigo and typed in the key words "Chlie" and "earthqake". After that, about 10 results popped up that had to do with the recent devastating tragedy. I read through the first few sources of bookmarked information. Most of the info was repetive but a few articles had some relevant information. I learned from the article that Sarfi bookmarked that after the earthquake, many other earthquakes occured as a result. Another thing I learned is that tsunami warnings went up in many places around the world including Hawaii and Japan after the earthquake. (Kolla)
 * Part III--The Search **

__Day 2__ I went on Diigo again and I went through the same process of searching "Chile" again. New stuff had been added so I checked that out. I clicked on a bookmark that Max had put up. I saw a bunch of really tragic picture. I saw in those pictures what a lot of Chileans were going through right now. It was very sad and made me feel lucky. Some of the pictures were kind of gruesome which really got me think that I need to learn more on what had happened in Chile the morning of the earthquake on February 27, 2010. (Taylor)

__Day 3__ First, I went on Diigo and I typed "Chile" into the search box on my Diigo group. Then, I clicked on a link that was posted by Max. I clicked on it and an article n the BBC news popped up. Up until that point, I had always thought the earthquake caused a lot of damage but barely killed anyone. I learned that actually many people had died in the earthquake that struck the country in South America. In fact, it was actually the largest earthquake to strike Chile in 50 years. This shows the imensity of this quake and about how much damage it caused. The estimation of the cost of the damage is about 30 billion. That is a lot of money which means a lot of damage was caused by this quake. ("BBC News")

__Day 4__ I interviewed a recent donor to a charity made for Chile. The name of the interviewee shall be kept private at his request. I asked him a few questions. First, I asked him what inspired or influenced you to donate and extend your sympathy to Chile. His answer was that he had heard of the earthquake om the news. The church that he went to was "telling us (the worshippers) where many different donations were being collected" to benifet others. He went to the one nearest his home where he donated a reasonable sum of money to Chile and shortly afterwards met me. I asked how he thought things were going on in Chile. "Things are definitely not going the best. I here of many different raids all over the place. Gangs are grouping up and taking advantage of the weak's money. People are starving everywhere. the damage to the property is unbelievable. I've seen some pictures, some pretty gruesome," he quoted. From this you can tell that the devastation in Chile is beyond imaginable.
 * Part IV--What I Learned **

From this experience, I picked up two things. I learned more about how to do research (sorry, iSearch) more effectively from a computer. I also learned more information on Chile and what happened at the time of the earthquake and what what happened during the earthquake and what happened after the earthquake. I learned how to use Diigo to save my work all over the internet. While using Diigo, I was able to learn how to use other people in my group's bookmarks to find information. Using diigo made a lot of things simpler for me because I don't have to use one computer. I can connect all my bookmarks digitally. I also learned how to cite information in a much more easier way by using citationmachine.net. I also learned a lot about Chile. i learned that the earthquake that had occured there was very severe. It caused a lot of destruction and killed about 70,000 people. Property damages were about __30 billion__ dollars. There were also many desperate people who needed food. To do this, people often joined gangs that raided people's homes. These raids were very bad because then that made the able working adults have to stay at home and gaurd their property. Less survivors could be saved and they often died of being trapped under a building. With all the hunger, damage, and raids, it was easy to see why Chile was a huge war zone at this time. **Works Cited: **

Kolla, Pradeep. "Earthquake 2010 3 Additional Strong Quakes Shake Latin American Country." //CNM News Network// (2010): n. pag. Web. 20 Apr 2010. .

Taylor, Alan. "Earthquake in Chile." //Big Picture// (2010): n. pag. Web. 26 Apr 2010. .