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TALCAHUANO, Chile – When the shaking stopped, Marioli Gatica and her extended family huddled in a circle on the floor of their seaside wooden home in this gritty port town, listening to the radio by a lantern's light.
They heard firefighters urging Talcahuano's citizens to stay calm and stay inside. They heard nothing of a tsunami — until it slammed into their house with an unearthly roar about an hour after Saturday's magnitude 8.8 quake.
Gatica's house exploded with water. She and her family were swept below the surface, swirling amid loose ship containers and other massive debris that smashed buildings into oblivion all around them.
"We were sitting there one moment and the next I looked up into the water and saw cables and furniture floating," Gatica said.
She clung to her 11-year-old daughter, Ninoska Elgueta, but the rush of water ripped the girl from her hands. Then the wave retreated as suddenly as it came.
Two of the giant containers crushed Gatica's home. A third landed seaward of where she floated, preventing the retreating tsunami from dragging her and other relatives away.
Soon Ninoska was back in her mother's arms — she had grabbed a tree branch to avoid being swept away and climbed down as soon as the sea receded.
Gatica's son, husband and 76-year-old father were OK as well, as were her sister and her family. The only relative missing was her 76-year-old mother, Nery Valdebenito, Gatica said as she waited in a hundreds-long line outside a school to report her losses.
"I think my mother is trapped beneath" the house, Gatica said.
As she spoke, firefighters with search dogs were examining the ruins of her home blocks away. Minutes later, the group leader drew his finger across his neck: No one alive under the house.
Such horrors abound along the devastated beach communities of Chile's south-central coast, which suffered the double tragedy Saturday of the earthquake and the tsunami it caused. Of the quake's 723 victims, most were in the wine-growing Maule region that includes Talcahuano, now a mud-caked, ravaged town of 180,000 just north of Concepcion.
Close to 80 percent of Talcahuano's residents are homeless, with 10,000 homes uninhabitable and hundreds more destroyed, said Mayor Gaston Saavedra.
"The port is destroyed. The streets, collapsed. City buildings, destroyed," Saavedra said.
In Concepcion, the biggest city near the epicenter, rescuers heard the knocking of victims trapped inside a toppled 70-unit apartment building Monday and were drilling through thick concrete to reach them, said fire Commander Juan Carlos Subercaseux. By late Monday, firefighters had pulled 25 survivors and nine bodies from the structure.
Chile's defense minister has said the navy made a mistake by not immediately activating a tsunami warning. He said port captains who did call warnings in several coastal towns saved hundreds of lives.
The waves came too quickly for a group of 40 retirees vacationing at a seaside campground in the village of Pelluhue. They had piled into a bus that was swept out to sea, along with trucks and houses, when the tsunami surged 200 meters (yards) into the summer resort town.
As of Monday, firefighters said, five of the retirees' bodies had been recovered. At least 30 remained missing.
They heard firefighters urging Talcahuano's citizens to stay calm and stay inside. They heard nothing of a tsunami — until it slammed into their house with an unearthly roar about an hour after Saturday's magnitude 8.8 quake.
Gatica's house exploded with water. She and her family were swept below the surface, swirling amid loose ship containers and other massive debris that smashed buildings into oblivion all around them.
"We were sitting there one moment and the next I looked up into the water and saw cables and furniture floating," Gatica said.
She clung to her 11-year-old daughter, Ninoska Elgueta, but the rush of water ripped the girl from her hands. Then the wave retreated as suddenly as it came.
Two of the giant containers crushed Gatica's home. A third landed seaward of where she floated, preventing the retreating tsunami from dragging her and other relatives away.
Soon Ninoska was back in her mother's arms — she had grabbed a tree branch to avoid being swept away and climbed down as soon as the sea receded.
Gatica's son, husband and 76-year-old father were OK as well, as were her sister and her family. The only relative missing was her 76-year-old mother, Nery Valdebenito, Gatica said as she waited in a hundreds-long line outside a school to report her losses.
"I think my mother is trapped beneath" the house, Gatica said.
As she spoke, firefighters with search dogs were examining the ruins of her home blocks away. Minutes later, the group leader drew his finger across his neck: No one alive under the house.
Such horrors abound along the devastated beach communities of Chile's south-central coast, which suffered the double tragedy Saturday of the earthquake and the tsunami it caused. Of the quake's 723 victims, most were in the wine-growing Maule region that includes Talcahuano, now a mud-caked, ravaged town of 180,000 just north of Concepcion.
Close to 80 percent of Talcahuano's residents are homeless, with 10,000 homes uninhabitable and hundreds more destroyed, said Mayor Gaston Saavedra.
"The port is destroyed. The streets, collapsed. City buildings, destroyed," Saavedra said.
In Concepcion, the biggest city near the epicenter, rescuers heard the knocking of victims trapped inside a toppled 70-unit apartment building Monday and were drilling through thick concrete to reach them, said fire Commander Juan Carlos Subercaseux. By late Monday, firefighters had pulled 25 survivors and nine bodies from the structure.
Chile's defense minister has said the navy made a mistake by not immediately activating a tsunami warning. He said port captains who did call warnings in several coastal towns saved hundreds of lives.
The waves came too quickly for a group of 40 retirees vacationing at a seaside campground in the village of Pelluhue. They had piled into a bus that was swept out to sea, along with trucks and houses, when the tsunami surged 200 meters (yards) into the summer resort town.
As of Monday, firefighters said, five of the retirees' bodies had been recovered. At least 30 remained missing.
