Massive earthquake hits Chile زلزال قوى جدا 8.8 يضرب دولة شيلى

Quote: Massive earthquake hits Chile Thousand of miles of the South American coastline were on tsunami alert on Saturday after a massive earthquake struck southern Chile. By Colin Freeman Published: 8:37AM GMT 27 Feb 2010 The quake, registered at magnitude 8.3 on the Richter scale, collapsed buildings and caused power-black outs in parts of the Chilean capital, Santiago. Eyewitnesses spoke of panicking crowds pouring onto the streets of the city, hugging each other and crying. Meanwhile the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre issued an official tsunami warning notice to Chile and Peru, and a less severe tsunami "watch" notice to Ecuador. "An earthquake of this size has the potential to generate a destructive tsunami that can strike coastlines near the epicentre within minutes and more distant coastlines within hours," the centre said. The earthquake struck at around 3.34am local time (6.43GMT). Its epicentre was just 75 miles from Concepcion, Chile's second-largest city, where more than 200,000 people live along the Bio Bio river, and 60 miles from the ski town of Chillan, a gateway to Andean ski resorts that was destroyed in a 1939 earthquake. In 1960, Chile was hit by the world's biggest earthquake since records dating back to 1900. The 9.5 magnitude quake devastated the south-central city of Valdivia, killing 1,655 people and sending a tsunami which battered Easter Island 2,300 miles off Chile's Pacific seaboard and continued as far as Hawaii, Japan and the Philippines.