Chilean troops on alert for post-quake looters

DOZENS of looters were arrested yesterday as they scavenged among the wreckage of the massive Chilean earthquake that has killed at least 723 people.

In Concepcion, the city closest to the epicentre, police held 55 people for violating a curfew imposed after looters sacked nearly every market in town. The first of thousands of troops dispatched to maintain order began to arrive.

At least a few looters re-emerged to rob a market despite orders placing the city’s security under military command. Rescuers found signs of life in the wreckage of a 15-storey building yesterday as the world offered aid to victims.

The toll of dead rose to 723, with 19 missing, the National Emergency Office announced, in a magnitude- 8.8 quake that President Michelle Bachelet called “an emergency without parallel in Chile’s history”.

Some coastal towns were almost obliterated – first shaken by the quake, then slammed by a tsunami that carried whole houses inland and crushed others into piles of sticks. Shocked survivors were left without power, water or food.

In Concepcion rescuers heard the knock of trapped victims inside a toppled 70-unit apartment building and began to drill through thick walls to reach them, said fire department commander Juan Carlos Subercaseux.

Only the chop of military helicopters overhead broke the silence demanded by rescuers straining to hear signs of life inside the building. Firemen had already pulled out 25 survivors and eight bodies.

Mayor Jacqueline van Rysselberghe told Radio Cooperativa that some food aid was arriving in the city of 200,000 yesterday for distribution to the hungry. Electricity was still out, however, and water was scarce.

Spanish professor Eduardo Aundez watched with disgust as a soldier patiently waited for looters to rummage through a downtown store, then lobbed two tear gas canisters into the rubble to get them out.

“I feel abandoned [by authorities]”, he said. “We believe the government didn’t take the necessary measures in time, and now supplies of food and water are going to be much more complicated.”

The UN said it would rush aid deliveries to Chile after President Bachelet appealed for aid.

UN humanitarian spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs said Chile was seeking temporary bridges, field hospitals, satellite phones, electric generators, damage assessment teams, water purification systems, field kitchens and dialysis centres.

“We are prepared to provide assistance,” Byrs told reporters in Geneva. “It could be quite fast, given that our experts are on standby and were alerted in the region.”

The World Health Organisation said it expected the death toll to rise in the coming days as communications improve.

For survivors, it said access to health services will be a major challenge and noted indigenous people living in adobe homes were most at risk from heavily damaged infrastructure.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also offered to provide disaster aid. Travelling in Uruguay, Clinton said she would bring some communications equipment when she visits Chile today.

Argentina said it was sending six aircraft loaded with a field hospital, 55 doctors and water treatment plants.

President Bachelet ordered troops to help deliver food, water and blankets and clear rubble from roads, and she urged power companies to restore service first to hospitals, health clinics and shelters. Field hospitals were planned for hard-hit Concepcion, Talca and Curico.

Bachelet also ordered authorities to quickly identify the dead and return them to their families.

Defence minister Francisco Vidal acknowledged the navy made a mistake by not immediately activating a tsunami warning after the quake hit before dawn Saturday. Port captains in several coastal towns did, saving what Vidal called hundreds of lives.

Thirty minutes passed between the quake and a wave that inundated coastal towns, leaving behind sticks, scraps of metal and masonry houses ripped in two. A beachside carnival in the village of Lloca was swamped in the tsunami..

Officials said at least eight people died and eight were missing on Robinson Crusoe Island.