Santiago, Mar 10 (EFE).- The head of Chile's emergency management office resigned Wednesday after criticism she had received regarding her agency's reaction to the Feb. 27 earthquake.
Carmen Fernandez presented her decision in a letter directed to outgoing President Michelle Bachelet.
Lack of coordination between the agency, known as Onemi, and the Chilean navy resulted in a failure to warn of the risk of tsunami after the magnitude-8.8 temblor.
Coastal communities and offshore islands suffered casualties and considerable damage from the tsunami that struck shortly after the quake.
Fernandez and the navy high command publicly blamed each other for the blunder.
Onemi was also criticized for waiting to long to organize and send help to the quake victims.
Fernandez, a journalist by profession, was not a political appointee, and President-elect Sebastian Piñera - set to take office Thursday - announced just hours after the quake that he was going to ask her to stay on for his administration.
Under the leadership of Fernandez, Onemi had confronted other emergency situations, including the Tocopilla earthquake in 2007 and - the next year - the eruption of the Chaiten volcano, which among other things forced the complete evacuation of the southern city of the same name.
The Chilean Education Ministry said Wednesday that public schools suffered roughly $1.6 billion in damage from the earthquake.
But ministry sources said that the figure could rise in the coming days as more reports come in, given that so far only about half of the schools have responded to a questionnaire about damage sent to them by Onemi.
Of the 4,432 schools that have sent in their damage reports, 1,019 are unfit for occupation and another 631 can function with certain restrictions, while 2,782 say they will have no problems continuing to operate.
The figure of $1.6 billion "is an estimate. It's a lot of money, equivalent to the ministry's total budget for a year," Education Minister Monica Jimenez told La Segunda newspaper.
"We will have to keep seeking emergency solutions for the most-damaged schools," she added, although she warned that care must be taken that the emergency measures "don't become permanent."
Chilean officials' preliminary estimates of the costs of repairing or replacing public hospitals, roads, bridges and other transportation infrastructure destroyed or damaged in the earthquake amount to more than $5 billion.
