Death toll reaches 78 in Chilean quake as scientists issue tsunami warning

By Fiona Govan, in Madrid, and David Barrett Published: 11:32AM GMT twenty-seven February 2010

Previous of Images Next Locals take to the streets of Santiago Photo: EPA Video grab shows cars flitting by a territory of a highway shop-worn by a vital trembler in Santiago Photo: REUTERS Chile"s President Michelle Bachelet declares a "state of catastrophe" Photo: AP The trembler struck at around 3.34am internal time. Its epicentre was usually 75 miles from the coastal city of Concepcion, south of Santiago

The quake, purebred at bulk 8.8 on the Richter scale, caused buildings and bridges to fall and led to power-black outs in tools of the Chilean capital, Santiago, 200 miles from the epicentre.

British experts pronounced a tsunami was right afar radiating from the epicentre towards Hawaii and alternative settlements on the Pacific Ring of Fire. The tsunami"s ferocity is not nonetheless known.

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Images promote on air wave in Chile showed waste had damaged off buildings in Santiago and crashed in to the streets below, as the city was plunged in to dark by energy failures.

Thousands of people fled their homes when the trembler struck at 3.34am internal time, entertainment in the streets with majority still dressed in pyjamas. Images showed a highway overpass that had collapsed trapping cars underneath it.

The vital upheaval lasted one notation and was quickly followed by a array of aftershocks trimming from 5.6 to 6.9 on the bulk scale.

Chilean President Michelle Bachelet reliable that at slightest 47 people had lost their lives.

An puncture executive after lifted the fee to 52. Five of the victims died in the Maule segment and one in Araucania, in the south of Chile.

"But with the upheaval of this magnitude, we cannot order out alternative casualties," Bachelet said.

One man told internal a air wave headlines channel in the city of Temuco: "Never in my hold up have I experienced a upheaval similar to this, it"s similar to the finish of the world."

Dr Brian Baptie, the British Geological Survey"s Head of Seismology, said: "This is largest trembler to set upon executive Chile given a bulk 6.7 trembler in 2001.

"A 1.3 metre tsunami call was noticed at Valparaiso, 200 kilometres north of the epicentre about twenty mins after the earthquake.

"Tsunami waves in the low sea transport about the same speed as a jet craft and would take about fifteen hours to reach Hawaii and about twenty hours to reach the alternative side of the Pacific."

Dr David Rothery, from the Open University"s Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, said: "This morning"s bulk 8.8 trembler close to the Chilean seashore has caused a tsunami that is right afar radiating afar from the epicentre and travelling at multiform hundred kilometres per hour opposite the Pacific ocean.

"The initial waves are approaching ot Hawaii at 11:19 Hawaii Standard Time but are additionally travelling along the South America seashore and will reach Colombia and Costa Rica after 1300 GMT.

He added: "A bulk 8 upheaval is a singular event. On normal there is usually about one of these per year globally."

The US Pacific Tsunami notice core released a tsunami notice for Chile and Peru, and a tsunami watch for Ecuador, Colombia, Antarctica, all of Central America and French Polynesia.

Japan"s meteorological group warned of a tsunami risk opposite large areas of the Pacific, as far afar as the Antarctic, and in the Philippines officials warned low-lying coastal areas to hope for for a probable evacuation.

The trembler struck 60 miles north-west of the Chilean locale of Chillan, a orator for the US Geological Survey said, and 70 miles north-east of Concepcion, a city of about a million people.

Concepcion is expected to be the majority exceedingly influenced city and there were air wave reports of collapsed churches and alternative damage.

Teams of firefighters and military marched by the streets of Santiago propelling ease and arising instructions by megaphones.

Initial reports prove that the upheaval could be felt opposite Chile and additionally sent tremors to multiform provinces in executive Argentina together with tools of the capital, Buenos Aires, 1,000 miles afar from the epicentre.

In 1960, Chile was set upon by the world"s greatest trembler given annals dating behind to 1900.

In that disaster, a 9.5 bulk upheaval ravaged the south-central city of Valdivia, murdering 1,655 people and promulgation a tsunami that smashed Easter Island and one after another as far as Hawaii, Japan and the Philippines.

Today"s bulk 8.8 upheaval is personal as a "great" trembler that can means "tremendous damage," according to the US Geological Survey.

The trembler that ravaged Haiti"s collateral Port-au-Prince on Jan twelve was rated at bulk 7.0, whilst the one that struck Indonesia on Boxing Day 2004 totalled bulk 9.2.