Chaos and desperation a day after Chile quake

Feb 28, 2010, 18:06 GMT

   Buenos Aires - 'There's absolutely no one here to help us,' says a woman close to tears in the earthquake-ravaged Chilean town of Talcahuano.

'The least you can give us is water for our children,' she says, defiantly brandishing a plastic water bottle in front of the television cameras.

A day after the massive earthquake that claimed at least 300 lives, the situation in the worst affected southern regions of Bio Bio and Maule was marked by chaos and desperation on Sunday.

Hundreds of thousands who lost all their possessions in Saturday morning's magnitude 8.8 quake are growing increasingly impatient at the lack of assistance.

In Concepcion, the capital of Bio Bio, looters took to the streets and robbed a supermarket located next to a regional authority building.

'We're hungry and thirsty,' said one man as he fled with a bag of food. Women and children, their arms filled with goods from the shelves, joined in the looting.

One woman stuffed packets of babies' nappies under her arms, while young men carted off washing machines and television sets.

'Quick, quick,' cried out one man as an armoured police vehicle approached. Tear gas was lobbed and jets of water directed at the fleeing looters.

But the mob responded with a hail of stones and moved around the corner where they broke into the giant supermarket through a different entrance.

'Let the children go. How can you fire tear gas at children,' screamed a group of women. Police initially turned a blind eye, seeing how desperate the looters were, but then changed their mind.

'The situation was chaotic form the very beginning. We're doing what we can,' policeman Jorge Cordova told the German Press Agency dpa.

There were similar complaints of lack of assistance from other places damaged by the earthquake and the post-tremor tsunami.

Most of the shops remained closed in the worst affected region, 500 kilometres south of the capital, Santiago. Those that stayed open drastically increased their prices.

In many places there was no electricity, gas or water. The telephone network functioned only intermittently.

People who managed to escape from their homes before the buildings collapsed spent a second day in the open, as did those who fled to higher ground to escape the tsunami.

Because everything happened so quickly, they were unable to take any food or water with them.

'There are 200 of us here and we have absolutely nothing. We're ready to pay but no one wants to sell us anything. We need flour, water and other food,' said one survivor.

Chilean President Michelle Bachelet put the number of homeless at 1.5 million.

The head of the Disaster Prevention Centre, Carmen Fernandez, vowed that everything was being done to help people.

But trucks were having difficulty reaching their destinations because many roads were damaged by the quake. Some port facilities were also damaged.

Chile has so far refused international assistance.