Breaking News, World News and Taiwan News.

Updated Sunday, February 28, 2010 0:34 am TWN, By Alonso Soto, SANTIAGO, Chile, Reuters

Sponsors
▪	Buy china wholesale products from reliable chinese wholesalers on DHgate.com!
▪	Save 75% for all hotels in Shanghai, Beijing and whole China. Lowest rates for Flights in China.
▪	Get the best deals for Guangzhou Hotels or choose from more than 10,000 hotels in 499 Chinese cities.
▪	Find great real time deals on China Flights. Book flights to China or China domestic flights 24/7.

Huge earthquake batters Chile, 78 dead

Chile produces about 34 percent of world supply of copper, which is used in electronics, cars and refrigerators.

Tsunami

Bachelet urged people to stay calm and to remain at home to avoid road accidents. "With a quake of this size we undoubtedly can't rule out more deaths and probably injuries," she said.

An earthquake of magnitude 8 or over can cause "tremendous damage," the USGS says. The quake that devastated Haiti's capital Port-au-Prince on Jan. 12 was measured as magnitude 7.0.

Bachelet said a huge wave hit the Juan Fernandez islands off the Chilean coast. Radio stations reported serious damage on the archipelago, where Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk was marooned in the 18th Century inspiring the novel Robinson Crusoe.

Bachelet said a huge wave swept into the southern island of Juan Fernandez, and radio stations said it caused serious damage.

She said residents were being evacuated from coastal areas of Chile's remote Easter Island, a popular tourist destination famous for its towering Moai statues.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said the tsunami may have been destructive along the coast near the epicenter "and could also be a threat to more distant coasts."

It issued a Pacific-wide tsunami warning for countries in Latin America, and as far away as the U.S. state of Hawaii as well as Japan, Russia, Philippines, Indonesia and the South Pacific.

According to a 2002 census, Concepcion is one of the largest cities in Chile with a population of around 670,000.

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.

Saturday's quake shook buildings as far away as Argentina's Andean provinces of Mendoza and San Juan. A series of strong aftershocks rocked Chile's coastal region from Valdivia in southern to Valparaiso, about 500 miles to the north.

The tsunami warning center said there was a possibility the U.S. state of Hawaii could be elevated to watch or warning status.

1|2