Tsunami swept away fleeing bus full of retirees

The 40 retirees enjoying summer vacation at a seaside campground nestled under pine trees knew they had to move fast after Chile’s powerful earthquake struck.

They didn’t make it. The tsunami came in three waves, surging 200 meters (yards) into this Pacific Ocean resort town and dragging away the bus they’d piled into, hoping to get to high ground. Most of those inside were tourists, and only five of their bodies had been found by Monday, fire-fighters and witnesses said.

Pelluhue’s horror underscored the destruction wrought by Saturday’s pre-dawn 8.8-magnitude quake and the tsunami that ravaged communities along Chile’s south-central coast -- those closest to the quake’s epicenter. Chile’s death toll reached 723, and most died in the wine-growing Maule region that includes Pelluhue.

Survivors here found about 20 bodies, and an estimated 300 homes were destroyed. Most residents were aware of the tsunami threat; street signs pointed to the nearest tsunami evacuation route. The ruins of homes, television sets, clothes, dishwaters and dead fish cover the town’s black sand beaches.

“We ran through the highest part of town, yelling, ‘Get out of your homes!’” said Claudio Escalona, 43, who fled his home near the campground with his wife and daughters, ages 4 and 6. “About 20 minutes later came three waves, two of them huge, about 6 meters (18 feet) each, and a third even bigger. That one went into everything.”

“You could hear the screams of children, women, everyone,” Escalona said. “There were the screams, and then a tremendous silence.”

Destruction is widespread and foods scarce all along the coast -- in towns like Talca and Cauquenes, Curico and San Javier. In Curanipe, the local church served as a morgue. In Cauquenes, people quickly buried their dead because the funeral home had no electricity.

President Michelle Bachelet said authorities were flying hundreds of tons of food, water and other basics into the region.

After the quake rocked the gritty port town of Talcahuano, Marioli Gatica and her extended family huddled in a circle on the floor of their seaside wooden home, listening to the radio by a lantern’s light.

They heard fire-fighters urging citizens to stay calm and stay inside. They heard nothing about a tsunami -- until it slammed into their house with an unearthly roar. Gatica’s house exploded with water. The family was swept below the surface, swirling amid loose ship containers and other heavy debris that smashed buildings into oblivion all around them.

“We were sitting there one moment and the next I looked up into the water and saw cables and furniture floating,” Gatica said.

Two of the giant containers crushed Gatica’s home. A third grounded between the ocean and where she floated, keeping the retreating tsunami from dragging her and other relatives out to sea. Her 11-year-old daughter, Ninoska Elgueta, clung to a tree as the wave retreated.

All the family survived except Gatica’s 76-year-old mother, Nery Valdebenito, Gatica said. “I think my mother is trapped beneath” the house.

Firefighters with search dogs examined the ruins of her home. The group leader drew his finger across his neck: No one alive there.

Close to 80 percent of Talcahuano’s 180,000 people are homeless, with 10,000 homes uninhabitable and hundreds more destroyed, Mayor Gaston Saavedra said.

“The port is destroyed. The streets, collapsed. City buildings, destroyed,” Saavedra said.

In Concepcion, the biggest city near the epicentre, rescuers drilled through thick concrete to look for survivors trapped inside a toppled 70-unit apartment building. Fire-fighters had pulled 25 survivors and nine bodies from the structure.

Chile’s defence minister has said the navy made a mistake by not immediately activating a tsunami warning. He said port captains who did call warnings in several coastal towns saved hundreds of lives.

In the village of Dichato, teenagers drinking on the beach were the first to shout the warning when they saw a horseshoe-shaped bay empty about an hour after the quake. They ran through the streets, screaming. Police joined them, using megaphones.

The water rose steadily, surging above the second floors of homes and lifting them off their foundations. Cars were stacked three high in the streets. Miles inland along a river valley, cows munched next to marooned boats, refrigerators, sofas and other debris.

“The maritime radio said there wouldn’t be a tsunami,” said Rogilio Reyes, who was warned off by the teenagers.

Dichato Mayor Eduardo Aguilera said 49 people were missing and 800 homes were destroyed. Some people fled to high ground, only to return too early and get caught by the tsunami, he said.

The World Health Organization said it expected the death toll to rise as communications improve. For survivors, it said access to health services will be a major challenge.

In Geneva, U.N. humanitarian spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs said Chile was seeking temporary bridges, field hospitals, satellite phones, electric generators, damage assessment teams, water purification systems, field kitchens and dialysis centers.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said she was bringing 20 satellite phones Tuesday as a first piece of a much larger U.S. aid package. Argentina was sending six aircraft carrying a field hospital, 55 doctors and water treatment plants. Brazil was sending a field hospital and rescue teams.

Security remained a concern. Most markets in Concepcion were ransacked by looters and people desperate for food, water, toilet paper, gasoline and other essentials Sunday, prompting authorities to send troops and impose an overnight curfew. The interior ministry extended the city curfew to run from 8 p.m. Monday to noon Tuesday.

When a small convoy of armoured vehicles drove along a downtown street, bystanders applauded, shouting: “Finally! Finally!”

Internet abuzz after Chilean earthquake

News of the Chilean earthquake, one of the largest recorded over the last 100 years, sent millions around the world online in search of information and ways to help.

The social networking site Twitter (http://twitter.com) was abuzz a mere minutes after the earthquake struck.

On Twitter, which has developed into a key means by which both individuals and news organisations seek first-hand accounts of breaking events, thousands flocked to the hashtags #Chile, #earthquake, and #tsunami. Hastags are the means by which Twitter users organize messages - or “tweets” - around particular topics.

The best way to follow topics on a particular hashtag is to visit Twitter’s advanced search site (http://search.twitter.com/advanced) and type the topic or hashtag into the “This hashtag” text box. Then click Search, and every recent tweet containing that hashtag will appear.

Followers of the hashtag #Chile provided links to up-to-the-minute news about the disaster, while those following the hashtag #earthquake concentrated on well-wishes and news about the potential after-effects of the historic quake. Reports of impending tsunamis around the Pacific Ocean sent legions to the hashtag #tsunami, where forecasts and first-hand reports from Hawaii and other endangered regions dominated conversation.

Hoards also flocked to the tweets of Elliot Yamin (http://twitter.com/ElliottYamin), a former contestant of the popular American Idol television show, who was in Chile at the time of the quake. Yamin’s tweets gave followers a sense of the magnitude of the disaster.

“Complete and utter chaos on the streets,” Yamin wrote. “No power.

... my heart is beatin outta my chest ... tsunami warning.” Hours later, fans and followers were relieved to hear that Yamin was safe. “I’m totally calm now,” the star wrote. “Got blankets from our rooms, and we’re all huddled on the street, no aftershocks for a while.” After the Haitian earthquake, Internet users quickly became used to donating to relief organizations either online or through their mobile phones. Unfortunately, there were more than a few scam artists on the prowl, too, seeking to take advantage of the world’s generosity.

In an effort to head off such deception, many of the major relief organizations quickly mobilized online. The Red Cross began accepting donations through its International Response Fund (http://bit.ly/9FR5Tw), while Save the Children asked for donations through its Children’s Emergency Fund (http://bit.ly/9cXGzV).

AmeriCares set up a Chilean Earthquake Fun web site (http://bit.ly/avqkWc).

Google, too, quickly published a Crisis Response page (http://www.google.com/relief/chileearthquake), through which people could safely donate to the Chilean relief efforts of reputable organizations including UNICEF and the American Red Cross.

Google launched a Person Finder tool on its Crisis Response page.

Person Finder provides a way for those looking for loved ones and those who might have information about those loved ones to connect.

Click “I’m looking for someone,” type a name, and Person Finder will provide a list of people. Click one of the names, and a profile page appears, offering places to leave messages or provide descriptions. Click “I have information about someone,” type a name, and Person Finder provides a way for you to enter what you know about that person’s whereabouts.

Chile minister says navy made mistake on tsunami

Chile's defence minister said on Sunday that the navy made a mistake by not immediately issuing a tsunami warning after a mammoth earthquake, a step that could have helped coastal villagers flee to higher ground sooner.

Francisco Vidal said, however, that an alarm was later sounded by port captains. He said that saved hundreds if not thousands of lives.

``The navy committed an error in not alerting the tsunami,'' Mr Vidal said at a news conference.

Immediately after Saturday's magnitude-8.8 quake, President Michelle Bachelet played down the threat of a tsunami, saying large waves were expected but no tsunami.

However, several coastal communities were smashed into by what authorities later recognized were tsunami waves.

Mr Vidal said that fortunately the navy has an emergency plan that allows navy officials in each port to sound alarms automatically when a rise in the sea is observed without waiting for an order from above. In this case, port captains sounded an alarm alerting coastal

populations.

``With this system, in spite of the diagnostic error, the people could be warned to head to the hills,'' Mr Vidal said.

Thirty minutes passed between the quake and waves that inundated coastal towns.

Many of the more than 708 known dead from the quake were in Chile's coastal regions swamped by the tsunami. Among those hit were San Juan Bautista village on Robinson Crusoe Island, the port of Talcahuano and Vichato in the BioBio region.

The surge of water raced across the Pacific, leading officials in 53 nations to post warnings. But the waves proved small as they moved past Hawaii and on to such places as Australia, Tonga, Japan and Russia.

Chile quake toll rises to 708

The toll in the devastating earthquake in Chile has risen to 708, Chilean President Michelle Bachelet said.

The country was facing "a catastrophe of such unthinkable magnitude" and will need enormous efforts to recover, he said at a press conference Sunday, adding the fatalities may increase as the rescue efforts are continuing, Xinhua reported.

An earthquake measuring 8.8 on the Richter scale rocked Chile last Saturday, causing widespread destruction.

Chile struck by one of strongest earthquakes ever

One of the largest earthquakes ever recorded tore apart houses, bridges and highways in central Chile on Saturday and sent a tsunami racing halfway around the world. Chileans near the epicenter were tossed about as if shaken by a giant, and the head of the emergency agency said authorities believed at least 300 people were dead.

The magnitude-8.8 quake was felt as far away as Sao Paulo in Brazil — 1,800 miles (2,900 kilometers) to the east. The full extent of damage remained unclear as dozens of aftershocks — one nearly as powerful as Haiti's devastating Jan. 12 earthquake — shuddered across the disaster-prone Andean nation.

President Michelle Bachelet declared a "state of catastrophe" in central Chile but said the government had not asked for assistance from other countries. If it does, President Barack Obama said, the United States "will be there." Around the world, leaders echoed his sentiment.

In Chile, newly built apartment buildings slumped and fell. Flames devoured a prison. Millions of people fled into streets darkened by the failure of power lines. The collapse of bridges tossed and crushed cars and trucks, and complicated efforts to reach quake-damaged areas by road.

At least 214 people were killed and 15 were missing as of Saturday evening, Bachelet said in a national address on television. While that remained the official estimate, Carmen Fernandez, head of the National Emergency Agency, said later: "We think the real figure tops 300. And we believe this will continue to grow."

Bachelet also said 1.5 million people had been affected by the quake, and officials in her administration said 500,000 homes were severely damaged.

In Talca, just 65 miles (105 kilometers) from the epicenter, people sleeping in bed suddenly felt like they were flying through major airplane turbulence as their belongings cascaded around them from the shuddering walls at 3:34 a.m. (1:34 a.m. EST, 0634 GMT).

A deafening roar rose from the convulsing earth as buildings groaned and clattered. The sound of screams was confused with the crash of plates and windows.

Then the earth stilled, silence returned and a smell of damp dust rose in the streets, where stunned survivors took refuge.

A journalist emerging into the darkened street scattered with downed power lines saw a man, some of his own bones apparently broken, weeping and caressing the hand of a woman who had died in the collapse of a cafe. Two other victims lay dead a few feet (meters) away.

Also near the epicenter was Concepcion, one of the country's largest cities, where a 15-story building collapsed, leaving a few floors intact.

"I was on the 8th floor and all of a sudden I was down here," said Fernando Abarzua, marveling that he escaped with no major injuries. He said a relative was still trapped in the rubble six hours after the quake, "but he keeps shouting, saying he's OK."

Chilean state television reported that 209 inmates escaped from prison in the city of Chillan, near the epicenter, after a fire broke out.

In the capital of Santiago, 200 miles (325 kilometers) to the northeast, the national Fine Arts Museum was badly damaged and an apartment building's two-story parking lot pancaked, smashing about 50 cars whose alarms rang incessantly.

A car dangled from a collapsed overpass while overturned vehicles lay scattered below. "I can now say in all surety that seat belts save lives in automobiles," said Cristian Alcaino, who survived the fall in his car.

While most modern buildings survived, a bell tower collapsed on the Nuestra Senora de la Providencia church and several hospitals were evacuated due to damage.

Santiago's airport was closed, with smashed windows, partially collapsed ceilings and destroyed pedestrian walkways in the passenger terminals. The capital's subway was shut as well, and transportation was further limited because hundreds of buses were stuck behind a damaged bridge.

Chile's main seaport, in Valparaiso about 75 miles (120 kilometers) from Santiago, was ordered closed while damage was assessed. Two oil refineries shut down, and lines of cars snaked out of service stations across the country as nervous drivers rushed to fill up.

The state-run Codelco, the world's largest copper producer, halted work at two of its mines, although it said it expected them to resume operations quickly, the newspaper La Tercera reported.

President-elect Sebastian Pinera angrily reported seeing some looting while flying over damaged areas. He vowed "to fight with maximum energy looting attempts that I saw with my own eyes."

The jolt set off a tsunami that 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 government emergency bureau for the Valparaiso region. He said the huge waves also damaged several government buildings on the island.

Pedro Forteza, a pilot who frequently flies to the island, said, "The village was destroyed by the waves, including the historic cemetery. I would say that 20 or 30 percent has disappeared."

On the mainland, several huge waves inundated part of the major port city of Talcahuano, near the hard-hit city of Concepcion. A large boat was swept more than a block inland. Pinera flew over the area and said an unspecified number of people had died in Talacahuano.

Waves also flooded hundreds of houses in the town of Vichato, in the BioBio region.

The surge of water raced across the Pacific, setting off alarm sirens in Hawaii, Polynesia and Tonga and prompting warnings across all 53 nations ringing the vast ocean.

Tsunami waves washed across Hawaii, where little damage was reported. The U.S. Navy moved a half-dozen vessels out of Pearl Harbor as a precaution, Navy spokesman Lt. Myers Vasquez said. Shore-side Hilo International Airport was closed. In California, officials said a 3-foot (1-meter) surge in Ventura Harbor pulled loose several navigational buoys.

About 13 million people live in the area where shaking was strong to severe, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. USGS geophysicist Robert Williams said the Chilean quake was hundreds of times more powerful than Haiti's magnitude-7 quake, though it was deeper and cost far fewer lives.

More than 50 aftershocks topped magnitude 5, including one of magnitude 6.9.

A tremor also hit northern Argentina, causing a wall to collapse in Salta, killing an 8-year-old boy and injuring two of his friends, police said. The U.S. Geological Survey said the magnitude-6.3 quake was unrelated to Chile's disaster.

The largest earthquake ever recorded struck the same area of Chile on May 22, 1960. The magnitude-9.5 quake killed 1,655 people and left 2 million homeless. It caused a tsunami that killed people in Hawaii, Japan and the Philippines and caused damage along the west coast of the United States.

Saturday's quake matched a 1906 temblor off the Ecuadorean coast as the seventh-strongest ever recorded in the world.

 

Quake, tsunami kill at least 214 people in Chile

An 8.8-magnitude quake and a resulting tsunami killed at least 214 people in Chile, Chilean Interior Minister Edmundo Perez Yoma has said.

“This was a cataclysm of immense proportions, and it will be very difficult to have a single figure,” he said Saturday.

Perez Yoma asked the community to help, as the government seeks to coordinate aid. People should follow government instructions to remain calm in the face of continuing aftershocks, he said.

Twenty-two people were rescued from a collapsed building in the city of Concepcion, where a team of firefighters had laboured to find and free them.

Hundreds of people were missing and feared trapped under the rubble of buildings which buckled under the force of the quake, the worst to hit the South American nation since 1960.

The earthquake occurred at 3.34 a.m. (0634 GMT), some 90 km northeast of Concepcion, a city of 630,000 in Chile’s central coastal region. It also caused damage in the capital Santiago, 320 km north of the epicentre, affecting buildings, roads and closing the international airport.

The Pacific region was bracing for a tidal wave, with Japan, New Zealand and Hawaii going on alert. On Hawaii, sirens wailed and officials began moving people from low-lying areas to higher ground.

The capital’s modern international airport was knocked out of operation and will remain closed to incoming and outgoing flights for at least three days. The city’s underground rail network was also closed.

Overturned cars littered motorway flyovers, which buckled and crumbled during the quake.

Power lines were down, water supplies were cut and burst gas pipes raised fears of explosions. Internet communications were also cut and the mobile phone network badly disrupted.

In Concepcion, where according to television reports there was hardly a street without damaged buildings, the extent of the devastation remain unclear hours after the quake struck.

The offices of the region government were reported to have been destroyed and the walls of the city’s prison collapsed, leading to fears that convicts might have escaped.

The European Union (EU) granted three million euros ($4.1 million) in immediate aid. “We stand ready to do whatever it takes to help the Chilean authorities at this time of need,” EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed condolences for the victims and the UN “is on standby to offer rapid assistance to the Chilean government and people”.

President Barack Obama also expressed his condolences and said the US “have resources to deploy should the Chilean people need our help”.

A forward-planning team from Germany’s THW civil-defence agency left by air Saturday evening for the quake zone.

The quake was 50 times more powerful than the one which claimed more than 200,000 lives in the Caribbean nation of Haiti Jan 12, said the head of the University of Santiago’s Seismological Institute, Sergio Barrientos.

The worst earthquake to hit Chile was in 1960 when a 9.5 magnitude quake claimed 1,600 lives.

Undersea Internet cables 'could detect tsunamis'

An Indian-origin researcher has proposed what he claims is a cheaper and effective way of detecting an approaching tsunami, by using undersea Internet cables to sense its electric field.

Monstrous tsunami waves, like the one that killed over 200,000 people in the Indian Ocean in 2004, create an electric field as they form. This field could be sensed by a network of underwater sensors which would be too expensive to build.

However, only five countries own such sensor arrays — the US, Australia, Indonesia, Chile and Thailand —— partly due to the high cost of installation.

Now, Manoj Nair and his team at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the US, have suggested the cheaper way of using the undersea telecommunications cables to detect tsunami’s electric field, the ‘New Scientist’ reported.

The electric filed is created as electrically charged salts in seawater pass through the Earth’s magnetic field.

Computer modelling by Nair’s team shows that the electric field generated by the tsunami that struck south-east Asia in 2004 induced voltages of up to 500 millivolts. Their calculations show this is big enough to be detected by volt-meters placed at the end of the fibre-optic and copper cables that carpet the floor of the Indian Ocean.