Chileans fearful of aftershocks camped outside Sunday as rescuers battled to find survivors of a huge earthquake that shattered roads and airports and triggered a tsunami across the Pacific. An 8.8 magnitude quake, one of the world's most powerful in a century, hammered Chile Saturday, killing more than 300 people as it toppled buildings and mangled highways. While the apparently low death toll could be considered a lucky escape from such a strong temblor, it dealt a serious blow to infrastructure in the world's No. 1 copper producer and one of Latin America's most stable economies. Two million people in Chile were affected, said President Michelle Bachelet, who added that it would take officials several days to evaluate the “enormous quantity of damage.” In Concepcion, a city of 670,000 people 70 miles (115 km) southwest of the quake's epicenter, thousands of people spent the night in tents or makeshift shelters made from bed-sheets and cardboard boxes. About 100 people were feared trapped in a collapsed apartment block and firefighters used drills and shovels to search for signs of life in the rubble. “We spent the whole night working, smashing through walls to find survivors. The biggest problem is fuel, we need fuel for our machinery and water for our people,” Commander Marcelo Plaza said. The government faces the task of helping rebuild an estimated half a million homes that were severely damaged as well as hundreds of buckled roads and collapsed bridges. The quake has raised a daunting first challenge for billionaire Sebastian Pinera, who was elected Chile's president in January in a shift to the political right and who takes office in two weeks. “We're preparing ourselves for an additional task, a task that wasn't part of our governing plan: assuming responsibility for rebuilding our country,” Pinera said late Saturday. “It's going to be a very big task and we're going to need resources.” Some economists predicted a deep impact on Chile's economy after the quake damaged its industrial and agricultural sectors in the worst-hit regions, possibly putting pressure on its currency. Saturday's quake triggered tsunami waves that killed at least four people on Chile's Juan Fernandez islands and caused serious damage to the port town of Talcahuano, flooding streets and lifting fishing boats out of the sea. Another strong aftershock rattled buildings in the capital, Santiago, early Sunday. In Concepcion, the streets were strewn with crushed cars, fallen power lines and rubble from wrecked buildings.
