Massive quake hits Chile, triggers tsunami

Map locates offshore epicenter in Chile
A TV grab from Telesur shows an image of a burning building in Concepcion.
A police officer controls the traffic next to an elevated highway that collapsed in Santiago.
A man moves his belongings inside his home destroyed in an earthquake in Valparaiso.
Vehicles that were driving along a highway that collapsed near Santiago are seen overturned.
Rescue workers search for victims and survivors after an apartment complex in Concepcion, Chile, collapsed during a powerful earthquake on Saturday, Feb. 27.

Saturday, February 27, 2010
NBC, msnbc.com and news services

SANTIAGO, Chile - A devastating magnitude-8.8 earthquake struck Chile early Saturday, toppling homes and buildings, collapsing bridges and spawning a tsunami that rolled menacingly across the Pacific.

At least 147 people were killed in the strongest earthquake to hit the country in 50 years and one of the strongest ever measured anywhere, according to Carmen Fernandez, director of the National Emergency Agency.

"Unfortunately, Chile is a country of catastrophes," President-elect Sebastian Pinera said, adding the quake heavily damaged many of the country's roads, airports and ports.

President Michelle Bachelet declared a "state of catastrophe" in central Chile. Chile's housing minister, speaking on state television, said there were reports of up to 500,000 homes damaged severely across the nation.

Chileans near the epicenter were tossed about as if shaken by a giant. Local radio reported 100 people were missing in a collapsed building in hard-hit Concepcion, one of Chile's largest cities with around 670,000 inhabitants. Firefighters were working to put out fires throughout the city, and most of the buildings in the city center were destroyed.

At least three people were killed by huge earthquake-triggered waves that smashed into Chile's Robinson Crusoe Island, a remote, rocky island named for the fictional, stranded sailor, Reuters reported.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the earthquake struck 56 miles northeast of the city of Concepcion at a depth of 22 miles at 3:34 a.m. (1:34 a.m. ET). The quake shook buildings in Argentina's capital of Buenos Aires, and was felt as far away as Sao Paulo in Brazil — 1,800 miles to the east.

More than 50 aftershocks of magnitude 5 or greater were reported in the hours after the quake.

Blazing buildings

TV Chile reported that a 15-story building collapsed in Concepcion, where buildings caught fire, bridges collapsed and cracks opened up in the streets. Cars turned upside down lay scattered on one damaged highway bridge. Some residents looted pharmacies and a collapsed grains silo, hauling off bags of wheat, television images showed.

Some 260 inmates in a prison near Concepcion escaped when walls crumbled, Terra Networks reported.

Concepcion's city hall also collapsed, according to radio reports.

In the town of Talca, about 65 miles from the epicenter, Associated Press journalist Roberto Candia said it felt as if a giant had grabbed him and shaken him.

The town's historic center, filled with buildings of adobe mud and straw, largely collapsed, though most of those were businesses that were not inhabited when the quake struck. Neighbors pulled at least five people from the rubble while emergency workers, themselves disoriented, asked for information from reporters.

Many roads were destroyed, and electricity, water and phone lines were cut to many areas — meaning there was no word of death or damage from many outlying areas.

In the capital of Santiago, 200 miles northeast of the epicenter, a car dangled from a collapsed overpass, 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.

“I saw how the cars fell off and I didn’t know what to do. I was alone here,” said Mario Riveros, a security guard at a factory in Santiago, as he stood next to a bridge that had fallen, according to La Segunda newspaper. “ I felt like crying,” he added.

Three hospitals in Santiago collapsed, radio reports said.

Tsunami warnings

The jolt set off a tsunami that raced across the Pacific, setting off alarm sirens in Hawaii, Polynesia and Tonga. Tahitian officials banned all traffic on roads less than 1,600 feet from the sea and people in several low-lying island nations were urged to find higher ground.

Hawaii could face its largest waves since 1964, according to Charles McCreery, director of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center.

"Urgent action should be taken to protect lives and property," the Warning Center said in a bulletin. "All shores are at risk no matter which direction they face."

Tsunami waves were likely to hit Asian, Australian and New Zealand shores within 24 hours of the earthquake. The U.S. West Coast and Alaska, too, were threatened.

Reuters reported that a tsunami caused by the quake caused "serious damage" to Chile's sparsely populated Juan Fernández Islands, where Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk was marooned in the 18th century, inspiring the novel "Robinson Crusoe."

"There was a series of waves that got bigger and bigger, which gave people time to save themselves," pilot Fernando Avaria told TVN television by telephone from the main island. Three people were killed and four missing there, he said.

Bachelet said residents were evacuated from coastal areas of Chile's remote Easter Island, a popular tourist destination in the Pacific famous for its towering Moai stone statues.

Santiago's international airport was closed as the quake destroyed passenger walkways and shook glass out of doors and windows.

In the moments after the quake, people streamed onto the streets of the capital, hugging each other and crying.

Several hospitals suffered structural damage and were evacuated.

'Houses were really shaking'

In the coastal region of Parral, huge waves rushed inland, sweeping cars full of people out to the ocean, ADN Radio reported. Parral’s hospital was partially collapsed.

"We don’t have a single service. It is as if you were sitting in a small boat in the middle of a gale," said Maria Elizabeth Soto in Chillan, a rural area near the epicenter. "It is incredibly complicated, all the houses are full of cracks, we have no communication," she told ADN Radio.

Simon Shalders, who lives in Santiago, told Sky News: "There was a lot of movement. The houses were really shaking, walls were moving backwards and forwards, and doors were swinging open.

"Santiago has got a history of earthquakes and basically there's not a lot of old construction in Santiago because of these earthquakes.

"The new buildings in Santiago are designed to withstand fairly strong quakes and they probably held up pretty well."

Sylvia Dostal of Keizer, Ore., said she was on the 23rd floor of the Marriott Hotel on President Kennedy Avenue in Santiago when the quake struck. "I had been in earthquakes before, including the San Francisco Loma Prieta quake, but this was different. The building was swaying AND moving up and down!" she wrote to msnbc.com.

"We made our way to the emergency stairs, since elevators were out of the question. There were children, babies and parents all in bathrobes and nightwear gathering outside the building," she wrote.

There were blackouts in parts of Santiago and communications were still down in the area closest to the epicenter.

Santiago resident Leo Perioto told CNN that "windows were wobbling a lot" in his six-story building.

"The whole building was shaking," he added. "We could feel the walls moving from side to side."

Early Olympics homecoming

Chile's athletes and coaches planned to skip the Olympics closing ceremonies in Vancouver, Canada, to get home as soon as possible.

Chile has three alpine skiers representing the country at the Vancouver Games. They've all finished competing, so they won't miss any events.

Scientists say the quake was a "megathrust" — similar to the 2004 Indian Ocean temblor that spawned a catastrophic tsunami.

Megathrust earhquakes occur in subduction zones where plates of the Earth's crust grind and dive. Saturday's jolt occurred when the Nazca plate dove beneath the South American plate, releasing tremendous energy.

An earthquake of magnitude 8 or over can cause "tremendous damage," according to the USGS said. The quake that devastated Port-au-Prince on Jan. 12 was rated magnitude 7.

In 1960, Chile was hit by the world's biggest earthquake since records dating back to 1900. The 9.5-magnitude quake devastated the south-central city of Valdivia, killing more than 1,600 people and sending a tsunami that battered Easter Island 2,300 miles off Chile's Pacific coast and continued as far as Hawaii, Japan and the Philippines.