Urban impact The levels of material damage were relatively low despite the high magnitude of the earthquake. Part of the reason behind this was the limited infrastructure development of the region next to the rupture zone. The most affected structures were those built of concrete, which in some cases collapsed completely, because they were not built using modern earthquake engineering. Traditional wooden houses fared better; although many were uninhabitable if they did not collapse. Houses built upon
elevated areas suffered considerably less damage compared to those on the lowlands, which absorbed great amounts of energy. Many
city blocks with destroyed buildings in the city center remained empty until the 1990s and 2000s, with some of them still used as
parking lots. Before the earthquake, some of these blocks had modern concrete buildings built after the Great Valdivia fire of 1909. Valdivia's bridges suffered only minor damage. The damage caused to
Calle-Calle Bridge led to its temporary closure after the earthquake, with traffic redirected to
Teja Island through
Caucau River where people crossed it on boats and, reportedly, also a rudimentary and temporary wooden bridge. Land subsidence in
Corral Bay improved navigability as
shoal banks, produced earlier by sediments from
Madre de Dios and other nearby gold mines, sank and were compacted. Parts of the
botanical garden of the
Austral University of Chile that were next to
Cau-Cau River and the city's southern outskirts along
Route 206 were permanently flooded. The earthquakes damaged an area that had suffered a long period of economic decline, which began with shifts in trade routes due to the expansion of
railroads in southern Chile and the opening of the
Panama Canal in 1914. Unlike Valdivia,
Osorno was saved from major destruction. In Osorno only about 20 houses were totally destroyed, although many
firewalls and
chimneys collapsed.
Puerto Montt, a major city today, had in the early 1960s about 49,500 inhabitants. The bulk of the damage in Puerto Montt was located in the neighborhood of Barrio Modelo and the northern part of Bahía
Angelmó, where artificial fills subsided. Angelmó and other coastal areas of Puerto Montt were among the few urban areas that suffered "total destruction" by the earthquake. After the earthquake a myth related the unusually warm and clear weather conditions prior to the earthquake to its triggering. When compared with the years that followed in the 1960s the autumn of 1960 in
southern Chile was not particularly dry nor warm.
Impact in the countryside , a steel factory closed a few years before the earthquake. The
tsunami that struck the coast of southern Chile destroyed seaside farms, killing numerous livestock and people. Barns and industrial structures were destroyed by the quake. The scholar Erik Dahmén believes that the earthquake resulted in a "
creative destruction" for farmers of Southern Chile. A large area of former pastures and cultivated fields around the lower course of
Cruces River was permanently flooded as a result of c. 2 m of subsidence caused by the earthquake. Over the years the new wetlands were colonized chiefly by
Egeria densa ().
Egeria densa and other plants created a rich aquatic ecosystem that attracted a permanent bird fauna, notably
black-necked swans. The economy of the coastal town of
Queule had during the 1950s developed significantly. Its economy based on fishing, agriculture and industry had grown. Queule was connected by road in 1957 to the rest of the country and the town had developed into a
balneario (resort town). This era of prosperity ended with the 1960 earthquake. Further north the earthquake destroyed numerous houses in the coal-mining town of
Lebu. The coal mine of
Pupunahue suffered severe damage which led to coal production recovering to "acceptable levels" only by 1963.
Creation of a national emergency management agency After the earthquake, the Chilean Ministry of Economics began to develop a comprehensive reconstruction plan. The efforts of President Alessandri led to the creation of a new institutionality in order to facilitate future emergency preparation and to tackle the country's recovery after the earthquake. The then-newly named Ministry of Economics and Reconstruction was given the task of coordinating rebuilding efforts in joint venture with
CORFO, an existing Chilean agency for the promotion of economic growth. Concomitantly, a ministerial-level committee, COPERE (
Comisión de Planificación de la Economía y de Reconstrucción), was officially named as the government's Planning and Reconstruction Committee. CORFO acted the secretariat of the committee and was entrusted with the preparation of the reconstruction plan and its detailed execution. COPERE had also been entrusted with coordinating provincial activities while CORFO remained the technical secretariat of those provincial committees. A comprehensive national plan for emergencies that helped Chile better prepare for future disasters was enacted, in conjunction with legislation that increased the powers of the President in times of national emergency. CORFO also created the National Company of Telecommunications (ENTEL) out of a pressing need to improve and modernize communication efforts in times of disaster. The victim was 5-year-old
José Luis Painecur, an "orphan" (
huacho) whose mother had gone to work as a
domestic worker in Santiago and left her son under the care of his father. == Previous and subsequent earthquakes ==