Even fire stations are looted
Tue, Mar 02, 2010
AFP
CONCEPCION, Chile, March 1, 2010 (AFP) - Looters pillaged shops and torched two stores in Chile's second city Monday as quake survivors ramped up a desperate search for food, angered by security forces trying to bar their way.
"It's full, they have water, food, diapers, but the police won't let us go inside," complained one man standing next to the Concepcion supermarket after a curfew was imposed overnight in a bid to stop theft and violence.
Police and troops stood guard trying to hold back the looters, fanning anger among the crowd.
Police detain people on suspicion of looting in Concepcion, Chile, Monday, March 1, 2010.
"It would be fine if they distributed things, or at least sold them to us," grumbled Carmen Norin, 42.
Tensions rose as police fired tear gas to try to disperse an angry crowd that descended on the Bigger supermarket and set fire to the building after they were prevented from entering.
The fire sent a cloud of black smoke billowing out over the ruins of Concepcion, one of the cities worst hit by Saturday's 8.8-magnitude quake which has killed more than 700 people.
The building's roof collapsed in the fire, injuring a volunteer firefighter in the coastal city of about 600,000 residents, some 500 kilometers (311 miles) south of Santiago. One person who emerged screaming, covered in flames, was rescued by the firefighters.
It was the second store to be set ablaze on Monday. Elsewhere, looters climbed atop buses to loot abandoned and destroyed houses.
"Here, people are even looting fire stations," sighed Conception fire department chief Jaime Jara.
"We understand that people need to eat, but looting hospitals and clinics... How can we serve our people?" he said.
One person was shot and killed overnight in circumstances that remained unclear and at least 160 were arrested for violating the first curfew imposed in Chile since the end of Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship in 1990.
Hundreds of troops were deployed to Concepcion alongside police as part of President Michelle Bachelet's deployment of 7,000 soldiers to the areas worst hit by the deadly tremor.
Desperate residents, hunger tugging at their stomachs and their throats aching with thirst, raked through the ruins of supermarkets, grabbing everything from food products to televisions.
"If they have basic foods, milk, flour, water, diapers for babies, the order is to not arrest them," said Carlos Huerino, a police inspector. "But if they have a television, they'll arrest them."
Bachelet declared a state of emergency Sunday in Maule and Biobio regions, and Concepcion was placed under curfew from 9:00 pm (0000 GMT) to 6:00 am (0900 GMT).
Chilean soldiers patrol the streets to stop looting and keep the order after a major earthquake in Concepcion March 1, 2010.
"Where they looted yesterday, there is nothing left. They took everything in the supermarkets and the pharmacies," said a 55-year-old cashier who declined to give her name.
"The mayor has set up water distribution point and Radio Biobio is giving out medicine and transmitting information, but we need everything - bread, milk."
At a dairy market, a man threw containers of milk from a balcony to a crowd of people below while others made off with sacks of flour.
But the crowd quickly scattered as a truck mounted with a water canon pulled up along with an armored car and two buses carrying some 30 policemen dressed in riot gear and brandishing truncheons.
The first troops to arrive were generally welcomed by local residents desperate for a return to normalcy.
"It's good that they've come because there was a lot of disorder," said Norin, adding some prisoners had reportedly escaped from the Manzano prison.
Soldiers stand guard as firemen fight a fire at a supermarket in Concepcion, Chile.
A resident observes the San Francisco de Curico church after it was damaged in a major earthquake in Curico, March 1, 2010.
The ferris wheel from the Florida Circus sits among debris in Iloca, Chile, Monday, March 1, 2010.
Rescuers carry a puppy founded alive in a destroyed house in Constitucion, Chile, Monday, March 1 , 2010
