by Our Foreign Desk

AT LEAST five people are dead and another is missing after a major earthquake struck Chile just before midnight British time on Wednesday.

Over a million people evacuated their homes, several coastal towns were flooded from small tsunami waves set off by the quake and electrical power was cut off to 240,000 households.

The magnitude-8.3 quake hit at 7.45pm local time and lasted for three minutes, causing buildings to sway in the capital of Santiago and prompting authorities to issue a tsunami warning for the Andean nation’s entire Pacific coast.

People sought safety in the streets of inland cities, while others along the shore made for higher ground.

“Once again we must confront a powerful blow from nature,” President Michelle Bachelet said in an address to the nation.

She urged people evacuated from coastal areas to stay on high ground until authorities could evaluate the situation.

Numerous aftershocks, including one at magnitude-7 and four above magnitude-6, shook the region after the initial earthquake — the strongest since a powerful quake and tsunami killed hundreds in 2010 and levelled part of the city of Concepcion in south-central Chile.

The tremor was so strong that people in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on the other side of the continent, reported feeling it.
People in Peru and Brazil also reported feeling the shakes, but no-one was injured.

Chile is one of the world’s most earthquake-prone countries because the Nazca tectonic plate just off the coast plunges beneath the South American plate, pushing the Andes cordillera to ever-higher altitudes.