Chile faces huge quake challenge: president

Last Updated: Mon, 1 Mar 2010 19:08:00 +1100

Chile's President Michelle Bachelet says the country is facing a catastrophe of unthinkable magnitude after Saturday's earthquake and tsunami.

More than 700 people are confirmed dead, but the president says the number of missing people is growing.

Officials say 1.5 million buildings were destroyed.

But Chile's ambassador to the United Nations, Heraldo Munoz, says despite the devastation, it could have been much worse.

Codes

The envoy said: "If we didn't have, in Chile, the strict building codes that we have had for many many years, due to the fact that Chile is a country with a history of earthquakes, perhaps we would be lamenting deaths in the many, many thousands.

"We have to find comfort in that, even though the material destruction has been monumental."

The official death toll from the 8.8 magnitude earthquake has reached 711 and the government has sent 10,000 troops to enforce curfews and quell looting by people desperate for food and water.

The government also says it made a mistake in first playing down the risk of a tsunami from the quake.

At a news conference in the capital, Santiago, defence minister Francisco Vidal blamed the navy for what he called a "diagnostic error".

Teams

Rescuers are rushing to get to the worst-hit areas in the central and southern parts of the country and rescue teams are arriving from around South America.

The tsunami surge smashed homes still standing near the shoreline.

Most of the dead were killed in areas where officials had urged inhabitants not to be worried.

Reports say about 350 people died in the small coastal town of Constitucion alone.

Immediately after the quake struck, President Bachelet tried to play down tsunami fears and issued a call for calm.

Saved

Chilean officials later revised their assessment and activated the tsunami alert, which Mr Vidal said saved "not hundreds but thousands" of lives as residents fled regions by the shore for higher ground.

Ms Bachelet says her government is now accepting offers of aid from around the world.

She says the greatest need is for field hospitals, temporary bridges and more rescue workers to search for survivors.

"We are facing an emergency without precedent in the history of Chile, and one which requires deployments which are both urgent and rapid," she said.

The president of the Chilean Club in Sydney, Australia, Luis Daza, says the community is in shock over the scale of the devastation from the earthquake.

Mr Daza says more than half of the 30,000-strong Chilean community in Sydney come from the central and southern parts of Chile, making it hard for them to contact family and friends.

He says meetings have already been held over the weekend, with more due later in the week, to organise a major fundraiser for the victims of the earthquake.

"The only thing we can do from here, the best thing to do, is just to help," Mr Daza said.

"Money matters because all the rest is a little bit of impossible for us from Australia to Chile."

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