Post-quake Chile hit by looters as toll climbs
Source: Agencies |
March 1, 2010, Monday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
RESCUERS edged their way toward victims trapped in a toppled apartment block yesterday even as looters stole food and robbed banks after one of the strongest earthquakes recorded hit Chile.
Authorities put the death toll from Saturday's magnitude-8.8 quake at about 300, but believed the number would grow. They said 1.5 million Chileans were affected and 500,000 homes severely damaged by the temblor.
A tsunami caused by the quake that swept across the Pacific killed several people on a Chilean island.
President Michelle Bachelet declared a "state of catastrophe" in central Chile. "It was a catastrophe of devastating consequences," she said.
Police said more than 100 people died in Concepcion, the largest city near the epicenter with more than 200,000 people.
Tear gas used
The city 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 jail.
Police used water cannon and tear gas to scatter people who forced open the doors of the Lider supermarket in Concepcion, hauling away everything from diapers to a kitchen stove.
Across the Bio Bio River in San Pedro, others cleared out a shopping mall.
A video store was set ablaze, two automatic teller machines were broken open, a bank was robbed and a supermarket emptied, its floor littered with debris.
The largest building damaged in Concepcion was a newly opened 11-story apartment that toppled backward, trapping an estimated 60 people inside homes where the floors suddenly became vertical and the contents of every room slammed down onto rear walls.
"It fell at the moment the earthquake began," said firefighter official Juan Schulmeyer. Twenty-four hours later, only 16 people had been pulled out alive, and six bodies recovered.
The quake tore apart houses, bridges and highways, and Chileans near the epicenter were thrown from their beds by the force of the quake, which was felt as far away as Sao Paulo in Brazil - 2,900 kilometers to the east.
The full extent of damage remained unclear. Ninety aftershocks of magnitude 5 or greater hits the disaster-prone Andean nation within 24 hours of the quake. One was nearly as powerful as Haiti's devastating January 12 quake.
As night fell on Saturday, about a dozen men and children sat around a bonfire in the remains of their homes in Curico, a town 196km south of the capital, Santiago.
In Santiago, 325km northeast of the epicenter, the national Fine Arts Museum was badly damaged and an apartment building's two-story parking lot pancaked, smashing about 50 vehicles.
Santiago's airport was closed and its subway shut.
The tsunami swamped San Juan Bautista village on Robinson Crusoe Island off Chile, killing at least five people and leaving 11 missing, said Guillermo de la Masa, head of the emergency bureau for the Valparaiso region.
On the mainland, several waves inundated part of the major port city of Talcahuano, near hard-hit Concepcion. A large boat was swept more than a block inland.
Authorities put the death toll from Saturday's magnitude-8.8 quake at about 300, but believed the number would grow. They said 1.5 million Chileans were affected and 500,000 homes severely damaged by the temblor.
A tsunami caused by the quake that swept across the Pacific killed several people on a Chilean island.
President Michelle Bachelet declared a "state of catastrophe" in central Chile. "It was a catastrophe of devastating consequences," she said.
Police said more than 100 people died in Concepcion, the largest city near the epicenter with more than 200,000 people.
Tear gas used
The city 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 jail.
Police used water cannon and tear gas to scatter people who forced open the doors of the Lider supermarket in Concepcion, hauling away everything from diapers to a kitchen stove.
Across the Bio Bio River in San Pedro, others cleared out a shopping mall.
A video store was set ablaze, two automatic teller machines were broken open, a bank was robbed and a supermarket emptied, its floor littered with debris.
The largest building damaged in Concepcion was a newly opened 11-story apartment that toppled backward, trapping an estimated 60 people inside homes where the floors suddenly became vertical and the contents of every room slammed down onto rear walls.
"It fell at the moment the earthquake began," said firefighter official Juan Schulmeyer. Twenty-four hours later, only 16 people had been pulled out alive, and six bodies recovered.
The quake tore apart houses, bridges and highways, and Chileans near the epicenter were thrown from their beds by the force of the quake, which was felt as far away as Sao Paulo in Brazil - 2,900 kilometers to the east.
The full extent of damage remained unclear. Ninety aftershocks of magnitude 5 or greater hits the disaster-prone Andean nation within 24 hours of the quake. One was nearly as powerful as Haiti's devastating January 12 quake.
As night fell on Saturday, about a dozen men and children sat around a bonfire in the remains of their homes in Curico, a town 196km south of the capital, Santiago.
In Santiago, 325km northeast of the epicenter, the national Fine Arts Museum was badly damaged and an apartment building's two-story parking lot pancaked, smashing about 50 vehicles.
Santiago's airport was closed and its subway shut.
The tsunami swamped San Juan Bautista village on Robinson Crusoe Island off Chile, killing at least five people and leaving 11 missing, said Guillermo de la Masa, head of the emergency bureau for the Valparaiso region.
On the mainland, several waves inundated part of the major port city of Talcahuano, near hard-hit Concepcion. A large boat was swept more than a block inland.
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