Aftershocks rattle Chile, death toll unclear

TERRY WADE AND FABIAN CAMBERO CONCEPCIóN, CHILE - Mar 05 2010 14:50

Aftershocks rattled south-central Chile on Friday, seven days after one of the strongest earthquakes on record ravaged the area, and the government said it was revising faulty death toll figures.

Some people ran out of their homes in the city of Concepción, shaken by tremors of 6,6 and 6,3 magnitude in the morning on Friday, but buildings that were structurally damaged by Saturday's quake remained standing.

"Some chunks of buildings that were already in bad condition fell, but nothing significant," the government official in charge of the quake-hit Bio Bio region told local radio.

Saturday's 8,8-magnitude earthquake, and a series of giant waves that followed, destroyed hundreds of thousands of homes, wrecked bridges and roads, and cracked modern buildings in half in the capital of Santiago. It also wreaked havoc in Chile's famous vineyards and briefly shut down some of the world's richest copper mines.

The government said on Thursday the death toll, previously reported as 802, was unclear due to confusion over who was missing. Officials said they had identified 279 dead people, but were not sure how many bodies were unidentified.

Then on Friday, Chile's two major newspapers said the government also revised down its calculation of fatalities in the hard-hit Maule region to 316, from a previous 587.

In a blog posted on the daily El Mercurio website, the former head of the emergency services office, Alberto Maturana, called the muddled numbers "a comedy of errors".

"The [emergency services] agency has no validity in public opinion, when it is supposed to be the most credible," Maturana was quoted as saying.

The government was already under fire for being slow to ship aid to the region, for underestimating damages at first, and for failing to properly alert coastal towns of a tsunami.

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In Concepción, sporadic looting was controlled after the quake as hundreds of troops patrolled the streets and handed out food aid. Long lines formed at one of the few grocery stores in town finally opened to customers.

But near Concepción in the port town of Talcahuano, which was battered by walls of waves after the quake, bands of looters rummaged through a factory and a retail store on Thursday.

As more information comes out about the extent of damages in the world's top copper producer and one of Latin America's most stable countries, analysts say the economy could bounce back from losses in the second half of the year as money flows in for the reconstruction.

President Michelle Bachelet said the new government, which takes office next week, will need to tap international lenders for money to rebuild.

Ratings agency Standard and Poor's has said the quake would have no immediate effect on Chile's credit quality. -- Reuters

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Aftershocks rattle Chile, death toll unclear

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