Panic spreads in Chile as quake toll hits 700

Amid frantic rescue efforts and isolated outbreaks of looting, the Chilean president on Sunday raised the earthquake death toll to 708 and sent soldiers into the shattered streets to both keep order and speed the distribution of aid.

President Michelle Bachelet called the damage caused by Saturday's magnitude-8.8 quake "an emergency unparalleled in the history of Chile" and suggested the death toll would likely spiral higher in the days ahead.

Some 2 million were said to be displaced, injured or otherwise impaired by the disaster. Untold numbers remained missing.

In devastated Concepcion, police fired water cannons and tear gas to disperse hundreds of people who forced their way into shuttered shops and were making off with food, water and diapers but also television sets. Several banks, pharmacies and gasoline stations were also hit.

Authorities, heeding the cries of residents that they lacked food and water, reached a deal with supermarket chains to give away food to needy residents.

"We are overwhelmed," a police officer said.

Using power saws and their bare hands, rescue workers tried to recover those caught inside, but efforts to determine the full scope of destruction were undermined by an endless string of terrifying aftershocks that continued to turn buildings into rubble.

The death toll climbed Sunday as rescue crews reached remote, devastated towns close to the offshore epicenter.

In one such coastal community, Constitucion, as many as 350 people may have been killed by the quake and a tsunami wave that hit about half an hour later, covering shattered homes with thick mud, state television reported.

Boats were tossed from the sea like paper toys, landing with a crash onto the roofs of houses.

"Our biggest problem is in the Juan Fernandez region [the Robinson Crusoe Islands]," said Ivan de la Maza, regional governor of the hard-hit Valparaiso region.

Multiple ocean swells estimated at 30 feet -- 10 times higher than the mild tsunami waves that reached Hawaii -- demolished coastal villages on the islands, 415 miles west of the mainland.

10,000 troops sent in

Authorities acknowledged that the damage was spread over such a vast area that they were just beginning to register it.

The 90-second temblor severed the Pan-American highway, the country's main thoroughfare, at several points south of Santiago. Bridges collapsed and embankments sank, rendering long sections of asphalt impassable.

An estimated 1.5 million homes may have been damaged, a third of them severely, Housing Minister Patricia Poblete said. "We are talking almost about a cataclysm," Poblete said in remarks broadcast on TVN.

The government imposed a limited curfew in hardest-hit areas that forbids people from wandering the streets at night, but doesn't force them inside damaged buildings. Many people huddled by fires and slept outside out of fear that more buildings would collapse.

Bachelet opened the door to international aid a day after saying that "we generally do not ask for help." She said the country needed field hospitals, water purification plants, temporary bridges and experts in damage assessment, but her plea was not immediately conveyed through official channels to Washington or the International Red Cross.

Experts said repairs will take years and will probably cost tens of billions of dollars.

Making a list of missing

In Concepcion, a new, 15-story apartment building toppled onto its side. Many of those who lived on the side that wound up facing the sky could clamber out; about 60 people on the other side were trapped.

Residents were outraged that it had suffered so much damage and were convinced that contractors had not complied with building codes that require buildings to be able to withstand temblors. Already, there was talk of taking builders to court once the emergency is over.

"There are people alive. There are several people who are going to be rescued," he said -- though the next people pulled from the wreckage were dead.

"It's very difficult working in the dark with aftershocks, and inside it's complicated," Paulo Klein, who led a group of rescue workers at the building.

Rescuers were working with two power saws and an electric hammer on a generator, but their supply of gas was running out and it was taking them a frustrating hour and a half to cut each hole through the concrete.

Though there were successes -- like Julio Beliz, who managed to free his neighbor from the rubble in Santiago after hearing him yell out -- the search for survivors was frustratingly slow.

Concepcion's main hospital was operating, though patients in an older half of the building were moved into hallways as a precaution.

"It was like God said 'No, run out the back,'" said Carmen Pena, 48, a grandmother whose home in Santiago was in shambles. "If we'd gone out the front, we'd be dead."

The earthquake hit during Chile's summer vacation, which left thousands of Chileans stranded overseas. There were frantic scenes at airports throughout the region. Flights into Santiago's international airport resumed Sunday.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who had a previously scheduled visit to Chile this week as part of a tour of Latin America, will proceed there despite the quake. Clinton is scheduled to meet both with Bachelet, who leaves office next month, and her successor, President-elect Sebastian Pinera.

The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Associated Press, Washington Post and Bloomberg News contributed to this report.