Alto Rio, the 15-floor apartment building that collapsed intactly in Chile's 8.8-magnitude earthquake a year ago, is set to remind Chileans of the pains and lessons for the years to come.
"The building started to shake about 30 seconds after the earthquake occurred. There was no electricity but I could see the ceiling was vertical and at that moment, I realized that the building had collapsed," one of the survivors Gunther Bohn said.
Edwin Jimenez, concierge of the building, said "there was a strong noise coming from under the building as if a machine was destroying it from the bottom...then two pillars of the four fell and the structure collapsed."
Eight people died and 80 others were left homeless by the quake that happened at 3:34 a.m. local time (0634 GMT), when residents were asleep.
According to investigations, the collapse was caused by several reasons such as the lack of concrete clinging and flattening.
In addition, there were mistakes in structural calculation, authoritative supervision and even in human management.
"The building crashed because of insufficient security in operation, which proved the failure of the construction company," economist Beatriz Saavedara told Xinhua.
"The building was shaking violently. The front side plunged and then the building moved backwards. Two big sounds were heard when the building collapsed and it split into two pieces," Manuel Olea, a witness said.
The building was demolished on Mar. 7, 2010, after there was no more hope for survivors inside.
Chilean President Sebastian Pinera issued a decree on Feb. 15 to formulate construction criteria.
"The collapse can not be forgiven as we are looking back at the case a year later," Saavedara said.
"The process of the post-disaster reconstruction is very slow and among the affected people, there is great concern because the emergency houses might become the final solution and they will not have new houses in good conditions," Saavedara said.
She added that the government has been hardly able to speed up the reconstruction work and to control the resources allotted to the reconstruction.
The last year's earthquake, which was considered as the fifth strongest one in history, killed 523 people and affected 12 million others.
The estimated losses were about 30 billion U.S. dollars and the government had provided subsidies for 135,000 affected families, while some 800,000 people are still living in emergency houses.