Dramatic rise in Chile death toll
2010-02-28 20:30
Concepcion - A massive earthquake that struck Chile killed around 350 people in the coastal town of Constitucion, which was also hit by a tsunami, state television quoted emergency officials as saying. This in addition to the previous estimation of 400 deaths.
Television images from the fishing port of Constitucion, about 350km south west of the capital Santiago, showed houses destroyed by the quake and a tsunami, which had washed large fishing boats onto land and flipped over cars.
The death toll from Saturday's 8.8-magnitude quake already stood at 400 before news of the devastation in Constitucion.
Hundreds of thousands of homes and some highways across central Chile were seriously damaged by the quake, dealing a heavy blow to infrastructure in the world's No 1 copper producer and one of Latin America's most stable economies.
A lack of water, food and fuel sharpened the hardship for hundreds of thousands of people left homeless by the quake and widespread disruption to the power supply threatened to hamper Chilean industry's recovery.
In the hard-hit city of Concepcion, about 500km south of the capital Santiago, about 60 people were feared to have been crushed to death in a collapsed apartment block where rescuers worked through the night to find survivors.