Chile Quake Toll Now 135; 150,000 Homeless

Amid rolling aftershocks Monday that emptied offices early and brought an anxious pause to cleanup efforts, the official count from Chile’s worst earthquake in 25 years rose to 135 dead, and almost 2,000 injured.

A total of 4,900 homes were destroyed and 21,000 damaged, leaving about 150,000 people homeless, Francisco Cuadra, chief spokesman for the military government of President Augusto Pinochet, said late Monday. Many of those evicted by the quake lived here in the capital and in the Pacific port of Valparaiso.

It was an earthquake that telegraphed its punch: It was centered in an area where about 300 small shocks were recorded in recent days. In the nervous aftermath Monday, Chileans could only be grateful that it hadn’t been worse.

Measuring 7.4 on the open-ended Richter scale, the Sunday evening earthquake left some city blocks in Santiago and provincial cities looking as though they had been bombed. In the older, poorer part of Santiago where damage was heaviest, bulldozers attacked mountains of fallen masonry and broken glass Monday.

Leaning Walls, Gaping Holes

Along the streets were walls leaning drunkenly and gaping holes in roofs. In the downtown area, firemen pried loose sections from damaged facades, and few buildings appeared to have escaped unscathed. Officials in the Pacific resort of Vina del Mar reported that between 20% and 30% of the buildings there had suffered structural damage.

Thousands of people stayed home from work Monday, and businesses that did open were closed early as emergency crews worked to restore essential services. Some roads were closed by damage to pavement and to bridges, but most water, gas and electricity transmission facilities have been repaired.

While a special government force assessed the damage, radio stations broadcast reassuring messages among separated members of families. One such message: “To the Marquez family in Copiapo: We are well in Santiago, and Silvia arrived safely.”

The Roman Catholic Church set up collection points for donations of food and medicine, and foreign governments offered relief assistance. But Chileans, though their nerves were jangled, seemed to think the worst was over.

The government said 65 people died in metropolitan Santiago, the capital, and 40 in Valparaiso, the biggest population centers in Chile’s central region, where 6 million of the nation’s 11 million people live.

In the worst single incident, 10 people died in the crush to leave a church in San Bernardo on the outskirts of the capital, where about 800 people were hearing Sunday evening Mass when the earthquake struck.

“The ones who died were the ones who tried to leave first. Just as they got through the door, the facade of the church collapsed. It was fantastic, horrible,” said Juan Andres Bravo, who fled the church through a side door.

In Valparaiso, the roof of a Methodist church collapsed during services, killing four worshipers.

Chileans are accustomed to earthquakes, but Sunday’s was the worst since May, 1960, when two successive quakes killed 5,700 people.

Thousands of people slept in parks and open spaces Sunday night. The government imposed a midnight-to-5-a.m. curfew, but there were no reports of disturbances or looting.

Adobe Buildings Hit

“The damage is consistent with an earthquake of that magnitude. Most of the structural damage came to older buildings made of adobe,” said Mario Pardo, chief seismologist at the University of Chile. “In a place like California, a shock of the same magnitude would have accelerated faster and caused more damage because of the greater number of taller buildings.”

Pardo said Sunday’s quake was centered in the Pacific off a small Chilean port northwest of Santiago.

“It didn’t surprise us,” Pardo said. “We have reported more than 300 small shocks in the same area since Feb. 21.”

‘Swarm’ of Events

What Pardo called a “swarm” of minor seismic events left scientists suspicious that a quake was building, he said, but they were not certain enough to issue a public warning. In 1973, in another seismically active region, more than 1,000 minor tremors were recorded but no quake followed.

Pardo said the epicenter of Sunday’s earthquake was in an area where the so-called Nazca Plate, part of the Pacific Plate, meets the Atlantic Plate in a line of instability that runs north-south from Alaska through Chile.

Pardo said an early repetition of a major earthquake in the same area is “very unlikely.”