A huge magnitude 8.8 earthquake struck Chile early today, killing at least 122 people, knocking down homes and hospitals, and triggering a tsunami that rolled across the Pacific.
Buildings caught fire, major highway bridges collapsed and wide cracks opened up in streets. A 15-storey building collapsed in the city of Concepcion, near the epicentre, and overturned cars lay scattered below a fallen overpass in the capital.
Chilean President-elect Sebastian Pinera said at least 122 people had died in the quake, which struck at 3.34am (6.34am Irish time), sending many people rushing outside in their pyjamas .
"Unfortunately, Chile is a country of catastrophes," Mr Pinera said, adding the quake dealt a heavy blow to the country's roads, airports and ports.
He said the death toll could still rise, but an emergency official said it was unlikely to increase dramatically. The Department of Foreign Affairs said it was not aware of Irish nationals among the dead.
Tsunami warnings were posted around the Pacific, including the US state of Hawaii, Japan and Russia. Telephone and power lines were down across large swathes of central Chile, making it difficult to assess the full extent of the damage close to the epicentre.
The South American country is the largest copper producer, and the quake halted operations at two major mines.
The US Geological Survey said the earthquake struck 115 km northeast of Concepcion at a depth of 35 km.
The capital Santiago, about 320km north of the epicentre, was also badly hit. The international airport was closed for at least 24 hours as the quake destroyed passenger walkways and shook glass out of doors and windows.
"I thought I'd blown a tire ... but then I saw the highway moving like it was a piece of paper and I realized it was something much worse," said one man who was forced to abandon his car on a wrecked highway overpass.
Chilean President Michelle Bachelet said a huge wave hit the Juan Fernandez islands, and archipelago where Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk was marooned in the 18th century inspiring the novel Robinson Crusoe.
"There was a series of waves that got bigger and bigger, which gave people time to save themselves," pilot Fernando Avaria told TVN television by telephone from the main island. Three people were killed and four missing there, he said.
Ms Bachelet said residents were evacuated from coastal areas of Chile's remote Easter Island, a popular tourist destination in the Pacific famous for its towering Moai stone statues.
Unusually big waves battered Ecuador's Galapagos Islands, where residents were moved to higher ground as a precaution.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center issued a Pacific-wide tsunami warning for the US state of Hawaii and countries as far away as Japan, Russia, Philippines, Indonesia and the South Pacific. French Polynesia was also put on alert.
"Chile probably got the brunt force of the tsunami already. So probably the worst has already happened in Chile," said Victor Sardina, geophysicist at the warning centre.
"The tsunami was pretty big too. We reported some places around 8 feet. And it's quite possible it would be higher in other areas," he added.
Local television showed a building in flames in Concepcion, one of Chile's largest cities with around 670,000 inhabitants. Some residents looted pharmacies and a collapsed grains silo, hauling off bags of wheat, television images showed.
Broken glass and chunks of concrete and brick were strewn across roads and several strong aftershocks rattled jittery residents in the hours after the initial quake.
Reuters