Chile will need international loans and three to four years to rebuild after one of the most powerful earthquakes in a century killed hundreds of people and demolished cities and towns, Chilean President Michelle Bachelet said on Thursday.
Last Saturday’s magnitude 8.8 quake destroyed or seriously damaged hundreds of thousands of homes, wrecked bridges and highways and cracked open modern buildings in the capital’s suburbs. It also shattered vats at Chile’s famous vineyards and briefly shut down some of the world’s richest copper mines.
“We will undoubtedly need to turn to international lenders,” Bachelet said on Thursday. “We are going to have to ask [for credit] and hope that via the World Bank or other mechanisms we can count on sufficient funds.”
The death toll from the disaster was thrown into doubt on Thursday when the government said it had identified 279 victims and backed off an earlier estimate of 802 deaths. The previous estimate included some missing people who have since been located, a government source said, adding that an unspecified number of bodies had yet to be identified.
WASHED ASHORE
Some witnesses have said hundreds of people were missing in the tsunami-devastated coastal town of Constitucion, where bodies continued to wash ashore on Thursday. Bachelet herself has said the death toll is likely to keep rising as rescue crews pull more bodies from the rubble.
Bachelet’s government initially said it would be able to cope with reconstruction costs out of its budget, but it misjudged the scale of the damage, which according to one estimate could reach US$30 billion, or about 15 percent of the country’s GDP.
The quake and the tsunamis it triggered demolished coastal towns and villages and caused serious damage across a vast area, including the country’s second-largest city, Concepcion.
AFTERSHOCKS
A magnitude 6.3 quake shook the northern city of Calama in the country’s mining heartland on Thursday, one of dozens of tremors in the past week. Officials said no damage to homes and mines in the area had been reported. Terrified by dozens of powerful aftershocks, survivors in some of the worst-hit towns are living in makeshift shelters.
Search teams with dogs scoured a small, tsunami-battered island near Constitucion where hundreds had been camping out for a summer festival when the quake struck.
“Everyone died there, whole families of 10 to 12 people who were camping,” said 30-year-old fisherman Mario Leal, who was unable to save his wife and two young children. “I lost everything. All my family and my house.”
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