One of the world’s most powerful earthquakes in a century battered Chile on Saturday, killing at least 214 people as it toppled buildings and triggered tsunamis that ravaged a port town and threatened Pacific coastlines as far away as Japan.
Buildings caught fire, others crumbled and bridges collapsed across swathes of central Chile, but the initial death toll was relatively low from a quake packing many times more power than the one that devastated Haiti last month.
An apartment block with up to 200 people inside collapsed in Concepcion, the closest major city to the epicenter, and rescue officials said they were unsure how many escaped.
Overturned cars lay scattered below a fallen overpass in the capital Santiago and telephone and power lines went down across the narrow country, making it difficult to assess the full extent of the damage and loss of life.
After a morning of rushed evacuations, the tsunami that reached Hawaii midday Saturday was smaller than officials had feared, causing no reported damage and never rising more than about three feet above sea levels, authorities said.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center lifted its warning for Hawaii about two hours after the series of waves hit Hawaiian shores, and later for most of the rest of the Pacific.
"It’s a big relief," said Jenifer Rhoades, the National Weather Service’s tsunami program coordinator. "It was pretty scary. We’re glad it turned out to be an event where there wasn’t tremendous impacts in terms of loss of life."
The cancellation means residents who evacuated could begin returning to their homes. More than 144,000 people lived in the evacuation zone.
Vehicles that were driving along a highway that collapsed during the earthquake near Santiago are seen overturned on the asphalt Saturday Feb. 27, 1010 after an 8.8-magnitude earthquake struck central Chile early Saturday. The quake hit 200 miles (325 kilometers) southwest of the capital and the epicenter was just 70 miles (115 kilometers) from Concepcion, Chile’s second-largest city.
A tsunami advisory announced shortly after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck Japan’s Ryukyu Islands early Saturday has been canceled, Japan’s Meteorological Agency reported.
There was no tsunami damage "though there may be slight sea level changes from now on," it said, referring to the areas affected by the advisory — the Okinawa Islands, the Amami Islands and the Tokara Islands.
A massive magnitude 8.8 earthquake rocked Chile early Saturday, killing at least 78 people and triggering tsunami warnings for the entire Pacific basin.
Chilean President Michelle Bachelet said she expected the death toll to rise.
Numerous aftershocks — including one of magnitude 6.9 — were felt within hours of the initial quake, the U.S. Geological Survey said.
A powerful earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.9 rocked Japan’s southern islands, injuring two and prompting fears of a tsunami.
There were no reports of serious damage from the quake, believed to be the strongest in a century to hit Japan’s southern Okinawa Island. Japan’s Kyodo news agency said two people were hurt, but there were no reports of any deaths.
Typhoon Morakot has killed at least 124 people and left 56 missing in Taiwan as of 10 p.m. Saturday, according to local disaster response authorities.
Another 45 people were injured after the typhoon, the worst on the island in nearly five decades, wreaked havoc across central and southern regions.
Sixty-six people died in Kaohsiung, 25 in Tainan, 16 in Pingdong, six in Chiayi, seven in Nantou, three in Changhua and one in Yunlin.
Taiwan leaders, already under fire over the response to a typhoon that likely killed hundreds, have accepted foreign aid after earlier refusing the offers, officials said on Saturday, as the president apologized.
Trying to repair its image after Typhoon Morakot caused widespread landslides in southern Taiwan, the government on Friday asked major world donors for equipment, a foreign ministry official said. Aid offers were initially refused on Tuesday.
Chinese rescue workers searched for dozens of people believed to be trapped by a massive landslide in the southwest city of Chongqing on Saturday, a state-run news agency reported.
Rescuers said about 80 people were buried in debris from the landslide and have almost no chance of survival, Xinhua reported. But rescuers hope to save 27 miners trapped under a mine in the area, the agency reported.
Mexico — Twenty-nine children were killed and more than 100 others were injured Friday when their day care center caught fire in the northwestern state of Sonora, a spokesman for the state’s governor said.
The victims were from 1 to 5 years old, said Jose Larrinaga, the spokesman.
