Chile quake toll rises to 82

Santiago, Feb 28 (IANS/EFE) The toll in a devastating earthquake in Chile has risen to 82, officials said Sunday.

A magnitude 8.8 quake struck Chile Saturday, causing widespread destruction.

Most of Chile’s 17 million people were sleeping, when the powerful quake struck.

Experts said the quake was 50 times more powerful than the temblor that struck Haiti Jan 12, which left at least 200,000 people dead and a million homeless in the Caribbean island.

The US Geological Survey said the epicentre of the quake was located off the coast of Maule in south-central Chile, some 500 km southwest of Santiago.

More than 20 aftershocks, half of them with a magnitude greater than 5, were recorded after the quake.

The Maule region is the worst affected in the quake.

Interior Minister Edmundo Perez Yoma said 34 of the 82 fatalities confirmed so far occurred in that region.

Fatalities were also reported from Santiago, O’Higgins, Valparaiso, Biobio and Araucania regions of the country.

Chilean President-elect Sebastian Pinera has vowed to allocate two percent of the national budget in the reconstruction of the affected areas after he takes office next month.

The 800-km area between Valparaiso and Araucania regions has been declared a “state of catastrophe” by the government.

President Michelle Bachelet, who has been coordinating relief efforts at the National Emergency Office, travelled to the Maule region to verify the scale of the destruction.

In Santiago, the quake lasted for about one minute. People poured out into the streets in panic. The underground stretches of the metro were not operating, while the Santiago international airport was closed due to damage to the control tower and passenger terminal.

Sources said several scheduled events in Chile were cancelled, including Saturday’s soccer matches, after the quake. The president has canceled her visit to Uruguay Monday to attend Jose Mujica’s inauguration as that country’s next president.

The earthquake prompted tsunami alerts across the Pacific.

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said a tsunami had hit parts of Chile’s coast and was heading for Hawaii.

In the Chilean town of Talcahuano, in the Biobio region, waves of over two meters higher than usual were registered. High waves were also reported in the central port cities of Coquimbo and Valparaiso, NOAA said.

On Pascua and Galapagos islands, waves were 0.3 meters above their normal levels. In Juan Fernandez islands, some 600 km off the coast, a seven-metre wave crashed into a section of a town, where residents told a radio station that three people were missing.

Tall waves damaged some homes in the coastal town of Iloca, in the Maule region, and on Pascua island, 3,600 km off the coast of the affected area. Local authorities ordered the evacuation of Hanga Roa, the island’s main harbor and capital.

Chile has suffered 83 major earthquakes since the first recorded temblor in 1562. A total of 40,265 people have died as a result of quakes in the country over the past 50 years.

The last major earthquake, a magnitude-7.8 temblor that rocked northern Chile July 30, 1995, caused numerous deaths, injuries and considerable material damage.

–IANS/EFE