Coastal residents of northern Chile are facing a third night sleeping in tents as major aftershocks continued on Thursday following a magnitude-8.2 earthquake. Some have began clearing up their homes.
Large queues formed outside petrol stations in the town of Iquique with police and military on hand to help control the situation. Dozens of families in the modest Alto Hospicio municipality, had their homes severely damaged, while others were left without water and electricity. In Arica, cleanup teams began to clear local streets with heavy machinery and brooms.
After a magnitude-7.6 aftershock struck just before midnight on Wednesday, Chile’s Emergency Office and navy issued a tsunami alert. It ordered residents living in low-lying areas along the country’s 4,000-kilometre Pacific coastline to evacuate the area for two hours. The powerful earthquake damaged several thousand homes and caused six deaths.