Earthquake in Chile kills hundreds

SANTIAGO, CHILE - Saturday 27 February 2010 - A massive 8.8-magnitude earthquake struck Chile early Saturday, killing hundreds of people, collapsing buildings and setting off tsunami warnings across the the pacific, including South America, Hawaii, Australia and New Zealand, Japan, the Philippines, Russia and many Pacific islands.

President Michele Bachelet declared a "state of catastrophe" in central Chile.

In Santiago, the capital, modern buildings are built to withstand earthquakes, but many older ones were heavily damaged, including the Nuestra Senora de la Providencia church, whose bell tower collapsed.An apartment building's two-level parking lot also flattened onto the ground floor, smashing about 50 cars whose alarms and horns rang incessantly. A bridge just outside the capital also collapsed, and at least one car flipped upside down.

Sunday 28 February 2010 - The number of people confirmed dead after Chile's earthquake has soared to 708 and is expected to rise further, President Michelle Bachelet has said.

"We face a catastrophe of such unthinkable magnitude that it will require a giant effort for Chile to recover, President Michelle Bachelet told a news conference. It was earlier said about 300 were known dead, with 500,000 homes severely damaged. She said that a growing number of people were listed as missing and she signed a decree giving the military over security in the province of Concepcion, where looters have pillaged supermarkets, gas stations, pharmacies and banks.

A tsunami caused by the quake that swept across the Pacific killed several people on a Chilean island and devastated over coastal communities near the epicentre, but caused little damage in other countries, after precautionary evacuations of hundreds of thousands of people. The tsunami warning was lifted a day after the earthquake.

Police said more than 100 people died in Concepcion, the largest city near the epicentre with more than 200,000 people. The university was among the buildings that caught fire around the city as gas and power lines snapped. Many streets were littered with rubble from edifices and inmates escaped from a nearby prison.

The largest building damaged in Concepcion was a newly opened 15-story apartment that toppled backward, trapping an estimated 60 people inside apartments where the floors suddenly became vertical and the contents of every room slammed down onto rear walls.