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Chile earthquake death toll rises to 708; Scientists defend false tsunami alarm
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Densely populated parts of Chile remained without water service and electricity Sunday night because of Saturday's 8.8-magnitude earthquake. The death count from the quake doubled on Sunday from a day earlier, to 708 deaths.
Some 2 million people are said to be displaced, injured or otherwise impaired by the disaster. .
As aftershocks measuring up to 7.5 continued to batter the country, rescuers arrived at coastal cities to find that entire fishing villages had been washed away.
According to reports, 350 people had died in the town of Constitución, which was hit first by the earthquake and then by a tsunami.
The death toll was expected to rise due to the number of missing people. Identification of the dead has been hampered because most of the people were sleeping when the quake struck and were not carrying any personal documents.
The Chilean president, Michelle Bachelet, has put the military in charge of security in the province of Concepcion, where looters have targeted markets and supermarkets, hitting food and water supplies.
More than 100 people remained trapped inside a wrecked 14-storey building in the city.
"We are facing a catastrophe of such unthinkable magnitude that it will require a giant effort [for Chile to recover]," Bachelet said after meeting ministers and generals at the quake-damaged La Moneda Palace.
An estimated 500,000 residential buildings have been severely damaged by the quake, leaving nearly one in eight residents homeless.
Scientists have admitted that they overstated the threat from the tsunami triggered by the Chilean earthquake, but defended their actions.
Hundreds of thousands of people rush from shorelines for higher ground Saturday in the Pacific Rim after scientists warned 53 nations and territories that a tsunami had been generated by the massive Chilean quake.
Officials at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre in Hawaii insisted they had acted properly, saying it was better to issue a warning and be proved wrong than to ignore a potential catastrophe.
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