Massive earthquake hits Chile

Lauren Frayer

A 8.8-magnitude earthquake hit south of Chile's capital early on February 27, severing power and phone lines, triggering tsunami warnings across the Pacific and rattling buildings through South America. By midday 122 deaths had been reported and the death toll was rising quickly.

Panicked people streamed into the streets of the capital Santiago, some 200 miles north of the epicenter, after the first quake hit around 3:30 a.m. local time.

It shook buildings for up to 90 seconds, witnesses said. Weeping survivors hugged and cried out in the pre-dawn darkness.

Chilean President Michelle Bachelet declared a 'state of catastrophe'. It's the biggest quake to hit Chile in 50 years.

A tsunami warning was in effect for neighboring countries of Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Panama and Costa Rica as well as farther-flung Hawaii, Australia, Russia and Pacific nations. A tsunami advisory was issued for the coast of California and an Alaskan coastal area from Kodiak to Attu islands, The Associated Press reported.

Authorities on the islands of American Samoa and Samoa told residents to move to higher grounds.

Chilean television aired footage of collapsed buildings and bridges, cars buried under rubble and bloodied residents wandering dazed in front of fractured apartment houses. "Never in my life have I experienced a quake like this, it's like the end of the world," Reuters quoted a survivor as telling local TV in the city of Temuco, where the quake damaged buildings and forced staff to evacuate the regional hospital.

"We are in the process of finding out about the effects of the quake across the region, the state of the roads and hospitals, the damage to buildings and of course the number of those killed and injured', Bachelet told reporters before heading into an emergency meeting to fix downed communication lines. "We're doing everything we can with all the forces we have. Any information we will share immediately. Without a doubt, with an earthquake of this magnitude, there will be more deaths".

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs says the White House is monitoring the situation, including the potential for a tsunami in Hawaii. Gibbs also says US is ready to help 'in this hour of need', the AP reported.

The US Geological Survey put the temblor at an 8.8-magnitude, with two dozen aftershocks in the hours afterward, including one that was 6.9-magnitude.

A quake of magnitude 8 or above is considered a 'great' earthquake that can cause 'tremendous damage', according to the USGS Web site. By comparison, the earthquake that devastated Haiti's capital last month was rated a magnitude 7.0.

Because the scale is exponential, today's seismic event was about 500 times more powerful than the one in Haiti. How much damage an earthquake actually makes depends not only on magnitude but also on depth, local geology, population density and building codes.

"This quake is much larger (than in Haiti), and it's occurring in an area that has a history of generating large quakes in the past," Randy Baldwin, a geophysicist at the National Earthquake Information Center in Colorado, told AOL News.

"I don't know if that (history) ultimately affected building codes (in Chile). It's hard to project damage at this early stage."

Baldwin said the earthquake also created a huge wave at least four feet higher than normal along Chile's coast near the epicenter close to Concepcion, the country's second-largest city with some 200,000 residents.

Bachelet said a 'wave of large proportions' hit the Juan Fernandez island group, with waters rising halfway into one inhabited area. If there are more aftershocks, people in coastal areas should try to escape to higher ground, she said. Her comments were carried by several news agencies.

"An earthquake of this size has the potential to generate a destructive tsunami that can strike coastlines near the epicenter within minutes and more distant coastlines within hours," the National Weather Service said in a statement.

Landlines are down but mobile phones with 3G Internet capacity are still working, a university professor in Santiago wrote in an email the BBC posted on its Web site. Another survivor wrote that the 'roads are mad with traffic and everyone is out in streets fearing aftershocks'.

Survivors also flocked to Twitter, using the micro-blogging site to search information about loved ones. Residents as far as northern Argentina, some 1,200 miles from the quake, said their houses shook. Some buildings were evacuated in Buenos Aires as well.

Chile holds the record for the largest earthquake in the world: a magnitude-9.5 that struck the south-central city of Valdivia in May 1960, killing 1,655 people and leaving 2 million others homeless. That quake also triggered a tsunami which battered Easter Island, 2,300 miles off Chile's coast, and killed people as far as Hawaii, Japan and the Philippines.

The quake came hours after a smaller 6.9-magnitude one in Japan, where an initial tsunami alert was also issued. There were no reports of major damage.

AOL News