Looters roam wreckage of Chile earthquake
Dozens of looters were arrested today as they scavenged among the wreckage of the massive Chilean earthquake that killed at least 700 people.
In Concepcion, the city closest to the epicentre, police held 55 people for violating a curfew imposed after looters sacked nearly every market in town. The first of thousands of troops dispatched to maintain order began to arrive.
At least a few looters re-emerged to rob a market despite orders placing the city’s security under military command.
Ingenious looters used long tubes of bamboo and plastic to siphon petrol from underground tanks at a closed service station.
Eduardo Aundez, a Spanish professor, watched with disgust as a soldier patiently waited for looters to rummage through a downtown store, then lobbed two tear gas canisters into the rubble to get them out.
“I feel abandoned” by authorities, he said. “We believe the government didn’t take the necessary measures in time, and now supplies of food and water are going to be much more complicated.”
Looters even carted off pieces of a copper statue of South American independence fighter Bernardo O'Higgins next to a justice building.
“We are confronting an emergency without parallel in Chile’s history,” President Michelle Bachelet declared.
Some coastal towns were almost obliterated, first shaken by the quake, then slammed by a tsunami that lifted whole houses and carried them inland and that reduced others to piles of sticks.
Across the highway from a looted supermarket, rescuers heard the knock of trapped victims inside a toppled 70-unit apartment building and began to drill holes through thick walls trying to reach them.
Firefighters had already pulled 25 survivors from the building, as well as eight people who died.
Efforts to determine the full scope of destruction were undermined by an endless string of terrifying aftershocks that turned more buildings into rubble - and forced thousands to set up tents in parks and grassy highway medians.
“If you’re inside your house, the furniture moves,” said Monica Aviles, pulling a shawl around her shoulders to ward off the cold as she sat next to a fire across the street from her apartment building.
In another part of the city, eight Peruvian families shared a four-storey building – the bravest living inside the cracked structure, the others in tents.
“We’ve received help from the neighbours, from passing taxis and from other people who have offered us a coat or something to eat,” said Samantha Fernandez, who offered space to boyfriend Jose Luis Jacinto after he fled his room during after the quake.
Ms Bachelet ordered troops to help deliver food, water and blankets and clear rubble from roads, and she urged power companies to restore service first to hospitals, health clinics and shelters. Field hospitals were planned for hard-hit Concepcion, Talca and Curico.
She also ordered authorities to quickly identify the dead and return them to their families to ensure “the dignified burials that they deserve”.
Defence Minister Francisco Vidal admitted the navy made a mistake by not immediately activating a tsunami warning after the quake hit before dawn on Saturday. Port captains in several coastal towns did, saving hundreds of lives.
Thirty minutes passed between the quake and a wave that inundated coastal towns, leaving behind sticks, scraps of metal and masonry houses ripped in two. A beachside carnival in the village of Lloca was swamped in the tsunami.
At least eight people died and eight were missing on Robinson Crusoe Island, where the tsunami drove the sea almost two miles into the town of San Juan Bautista.
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