At 23:32, the earth began to shake strongly underneath Chillán, destroying more than half of it, including around 3,500 homes and the recently constructed Casa Rabié which then was in the city.

The city of Chillán was built on a tectonic structure at the end of the Tertiary Period in the part of the Longitudinal Valley which is identified with the Central level.

The natural flow of the enclave of Chillán is confirmed by later geological studies, found the root of the earthquake of 1939, when a prospection of more than 80 meters was carried out, without finding the bedrock.

At the start of February 1939, Major Caleb V. Haynes of the U.S. Army Air Corps commanded a special "flight of mercy" with medical supplies from the American Red Cross loaded in the experimental prototype Boeing XB-15 bomber.

The airplane departed from Langley Field, Virginia for Santiago, Chile, and covered a distance 4,933 miles in 49 hours and 18 minutes, with only two stops to refuel in the Panama Canal Zone and in Lima, Peru.