Chile quake kills 300, tsunami warning lifted

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Chile quake kills 300, tsunami warning lifted

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28 February,2010 09:01 am

At least 300 people have been killed after a huge earthquake struck the Chilean coast, which triggered a tsunami and sparked warnings for 53 countries but later on the warning were lifted.Chile's President Michelle Bachelet has declared a state of catastrophe following the quake, which measured a significant 8.8 on the Richter scale. The quake shook the Chilean capital Santiago for about a minute and a half in the early hours of the morning and caused some buildings to collapse. In the moments after the quake, people streamed onto the streets of the capital, hugging each other and crying. Several big aftershocks later hit the south-central region, including one with a magnitude of 6.9. In Santiago, the international airport was forced to close, a highway bridge collapsed and chunks of concrete fell from buildings.There were also power cuts and phones lines were down in the city, which is about 200 miles away from the quake's epicentre. That was close to the town of Maule, and happened at a depth of 22 miles at 03:34am (06:34am UK time). Communications were down in the area nearest to the epicentre, which was only 56 miles from the second largest city Concepcion, where more than 200,000 people live along the Bio Bio river.