[economex]

Chile appeals for aid as quake toll surpasses 700 | AP | 02/28/2010

Deaths are up sharply and now they're asking for aid. I certainly hope they get it. Where are the capabilities to text aid to Chile?

President Michelle Bachelet announced the sharply higher new death toll after a six-hour meeting with aides and emergency officials struggling to cope with one of the most powerful earthquakes in centuries.

"We face a catastrophe of such unthinkable magnitude that it will require a giant effort" for Chile to recover, Bachelet told a news conference at the presidential palace, which itself suffered minor cracks in Saturday's magnitude-8.8 quake.

She said that a growing number of people were listed as missing and she signed a decree giving the military over security in the province of Concepcion, where looters have pillaged supermarkets, gas stations, pharmacies and banks.

The president, who leaves office on March 11, also said the country would accept some of the offers of aid that have poured in from around the world.

She said the country needs field hospitals and temporary bridges, water purification plants and damage assessment experts , as well as rescuers to help relieve workers who have been laboring frantically for more than a day.

Officials earlier had said about 300 were known dead, with 500,000 homes severely damaged.

A tsunami caused by the quake that swept across the Pacific killed several people on a Chilean island and devastated over coastal communities near the epicenter, but caused little damage in other countries, after precautionary evacuations of hundreds of thousands of people. The tsunami warning was lifted a day after the earthquake.

Police said more than 100 people died in Concepcion, the largest city near the epicenter with more than 200,000 people. The university was among the buildings that caught fire around the city as gas and power lines snapped. Many streets were littered with rubble from edifices and inmates escaped from a nearby prison.