8.8 Earthquake Hits Chile

More than 300 people had died, said Carmen Fernández, director of the Chilean national emergency agency, and more than 1.5 million people were displaced. The death toll was expected to rise, particularly around Concepción, Chile’s second-largest metropolitan area, which is roughly 70 miles from the quake’s center.

There, cars lay mangled and upended on streets littered with telephone and power cables. The quake toppled old and at least some new construction, despite the country’s strict earthquake codes. A new 14-story apartment building fell, while an older, biochemical lab at the University of Concepción caught fire.

In the nearby port of Talcahuano, a giant wave flooded the main square before receding and washing a large fishing boat onto the city streets.

Elsewhere in the country old adobe buildings (mostly homes and shops) crumbled in cities like Curico, Talca and Temuco.

“We’re talking about a tragedy,” President Michelle Bachelet said at a news conference Saturday night at the presidential palace in Santiago, hours after she declared a “state of catastrophe.” She called the quake “one of the worst tragedies in the last 50 years.”

In Santiago, the capital, which is about five hours to the north and about 200 miles from the quake’s epicenter, frightened residents felt the city shake for nearly 90 seconds. Car alarms pierced the air during the middle of the night, and at least one highway buckled, toppling cars.

The quake, the fifth largest in the world recorded since 1900, set off tsunami waves that swamped nearby islands before moving across the Pacific. Hawaii began evacuations before dawn, but by early afternoon there — more than 15 hours after the earthquake first struck 6,500 miles away — the fears of a destructive wave had passed.

In Chile, more than two dozen significant aftershocks struck the country.

“This was a powerful and sustained eruption,” Paul E. Simons, the United States Ambassador to Chile said in a telephone interview from Santiago. “Most of the embassy folks I talked to said that it felt like five minutes. It was definitely an emotional experience.”

There were long lines at supermarkets and gas stations. The capital city, according to residents there, was mostly calm by the late afternoon Saturday. But the scene was grimmer in Concepción, five hours away.

Major seaports and airports, including the main airport in Santiago, were out of operation across the central region, Chilean officials said. Cellphone and Internet service was either suspended or sporadic throughout the country, considered one of the most wired in Latin America, complicating rescue efforts.

Most of the damage was in Concepción, near where the world’s largest recorded earthquake, a 9.5 trembler, struck in 1960..

Earlier on Saturday, the effects of the earthquake began rippling through the Pacific, where a huge wave had swept into a populated area in Robinson Crusoe Island, 410 miles off the Chilean coast. Authorities there said at least four people had been killed.

Across the Pacific, the first hemisphere-wide tsunami warning since 1964 was issued.

In Hawaii, when the swells finally did hit, they were not as high as feared.

President Obama spoke briefly outside the White House on Saturday afternoon, expressing concern for the country and saying the United States would offer aid in rescue and recovery efforts.

“Early indications are that hundreds of lives have been lost in Chile and the damage has been severe,” Mr. Obama said. He told Mrs. Bachelet that the United States was ready to help if needed. “We will be there for her should the Chilean people need assistance,” he said

State Department officials said that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who had been planning a trip to South America beginning on Monday, was also contacting Mrs. Bachelet, with whom she has long had warm personal relations.

Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, also offered his condolences, as well as longer-term aid should Chilean officials signal the need for it.

The earthquake struck at 3:34 a.m. in central Chile, centered roughly 200 miles southwest of Santiago at a depth of 22 miles, the United States Geological Survey reported.

The quake was vastly more powerful than last month’s 7.0-magnitude earthquake that caused widespread damage in Haiti and, according to the Haitian government, killed an estimated 230,000 people.

But experts said the damage in Chile was likely to be much more limited, and the rescue efforts easier, because it is a far more prosperous country and was better prepared because of the 1960 quake, which killed nearly 2,000 people in Chile. Chile rests in one of the most active earthquake zones in the world, and building codes are far stricter than in Haiti.

The most powerful earthquake ever recorded was also in Chile: a 9.5-magnitude quake struck in the spring of 1960 and set off a series of deadly tsunamis that killed people as far away as Hawaii and Japan.

But that earthquake in Chile, which killed nearly 2,000 people and left more than two million homeless at the time, prepared officials and residents in the region for future devastating effects.

Shortly after a 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck in Valparaíso in 1985, the country established strict building codes, according to Andre Filiatrault, the director of the Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research at the University at Buffalo.

“Chile is not a stranger to earthquakes,” he said Saturday in a telephone interview. He said the government code was called the Earthquake Resistant Design of Buildings, and Chilean engineers have been very active in world earthquake conferences.

“There is a lot of reinforced concrete in Chile, which is normal in Latin America,” Professor Filiatrault said. “The only issue in this, like any earthquakes, are the older buildings and residential construction that might not have been designed according to these codes.”

This was in direct contrast to Haiti’s building codes and infrastructure, which was unprepared for the Jan. 12 earthquake, he added.

“If you are considering this magnitude is 8.8 — which is close to 100 times greater than the Haitian quake, I would be very surprised if the death tolls come close,” Professor Filiatrault said.