United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-Moon will visit Chile today to assess the earthquake damage with Chile's president Michelle Bachelet and president-elect Sebastian Pinera.
Chile will need international loans and three to four years to rebuild after one of the most powerful earthquakes in a century killed hundreds of people and demolished cities and towns, Ms Bachelet said yesterday.
Last Saturday's 8.8-magnitude quake destroyed or seriously damaged hundreds of thousands of homes, bridges and highways and cracked open modern buildings in the capital's suburbs. It also shattered vats at Chile's famous vineyards and briefly shut down some of the world's richest copper mines.
"We will undoubtedly need to turn to international lenders," Ms Bachelet said yesterday. "We are going to have to ask (for credit) and hope that via the World Bank or other mechanisms we can count on sufficient funds."
Some witnesses have said hundreds of people were missing in the tsunami-devastated coastal town of Constitucion, where bodies continued to wash ashore yesterday.
Ms Bachelet said the death toll is likely to keep rising as rescue crews pull more bodies from the rubble.
The quake and the tsunamis it triggered demolished coastal towns and villages and caused serious
damage across a vast area of south-central Chile, including the country's second-largest city, Concepción.
A 6.3-magnitude quake shook the northern city of Calama in the country's mining heartland yesterday, one of dozens of tremors in the past week. Officials said no damage to homes and mines in the area had been reported.
President-elect Sebastian Pinera, a billionaire businessman who will take office on March 11th, unveiled a four-phase plan yesterday to rebuild the country and acknowledged the quake will alter the course of his government.
"The future government will not be the government of the earthquake, it will be the government of
reconstruction," he said.
Terrified by dozens of powerful aftershocks, survivors in some of the worst-hit towns are living in
makeshift shelters and abandoned cars on hillsides as rescue workers search the rubble for survivors and troops patrol to quell looting.
Search teams with dogs scoured a small, tsunami-battered island near Constitucion where hundreds had been camping out for a summer festival when the quake struck.
"Everyone died there, whole families of 10 to 12 people who were camping," said 30-year-old fisherman Mario Leal, who was unable to save his wife and two young children. "I lost everything. All my family and my house."
Widespread looting broke out in the days following the quake but the country's defense minister told
reporters the thousands of troops sent to stricken areas had succeeded in ending the "pillaging and
vandalism."
Friends and relatives at home and abroad used Facebook, Twitter and Google to post messages and pictures of the missing as well as of young children found alive without families. Radio stations broadcast names of those yet to be traced.
Officials in some areas said they had called off the search for survivors and were focusing on distributing aid. Very few survivors emerged from the water after enormous waves sucked them out to sea on Saturday.
"Our priority will be to tend to the living," said Jaime Toha, the most senior government official in the Bio Bio region, the worst-hit by the quake.
Reuters