Chile earthquake: tsunami fears as death toll hits 147

At least 147 have been killed and nearly a quarter of the globe put on urgent tsunami alert after one of the most powerful earthquakes of modern times hit South America. A tremor with a magnitude of 8.8 devastated large parts of southern Chile and sent huge waves racing at up to 400 miles an hour across the Pacific. Isolated ocean islands were reported to have suffered severe wave damage, and tsunami warnings were issued across a vast area stretching from Russia and Japan through to the Philippines and New Zealand. In the Chilean capital, Santiago, some five million woke up to "hell" as the earthquake, which struck in the small hours of Saturday morning, collapsed tower blocks and bridges and swallowed cars as it ripped cracks in the roads. Rescue teams worked throughout the day to dig out people buried alive in the rubble. Residents of Santiago's many tower soaring blocks spoke of their terror as the buildings swayed and shook in the middle of the night. "We are lucky to be alive," said Lloyd Edmondson, 27, a British businessman resident in Santiago. "We live on the 19th floor, the top floor of our building, and it was swinging like crazy. All the glasses, cabinets, paintings were smashed to pieces and the lift in the building fell from the 6th floor to the bottom floor and is ruined. Thank goodness nobody was in it. "The noise of the rumbling was the most surreal thing. We could hardly even make it to the emergency stairs because the building was moving so much." The Chilean government, which declared a state of "national catastrophe", put the death toll at 147 people. But with large parts of the country cut off, that figure is expected to rise. There were also unconfirmed reports of tsunami-related deaths on the sparsely-populated Juan Fernandez islands, off Chile's 2,700-mile long coastline. The archipelago, said to be the location that inspired Daniel Defoe's castaway novelRobinson Crusoe, was right in the tsunami's path and had little time to react to warnings.