There is news that looting has broken out in Chile in the city of Concepcion.

Rescuers dug through ruins looking for quake survivors in Chile Sunday as major looting erupted, a day after one of the most powerful temblors on record shook the wealthy South American nation.

Officials said the confirmed death toll topped 700, but hundreds -- maybe thousands -- of people remained unaccounted for.

Chilean President Michelle Bachelet called it “a catastrophe of such unthinkable magnitude that it will require a giant effort” to recover.

The 8.8-magnitude earthquake was 500 times stronger than the 7.0 temblor that hit Haiti last month, destroying most of the poor island nation and killing 200,000 people.

But Chile, with a stable economy and a strong infrastructure, was expected to suffer far less than Haiti, where poverty and corruption left citizens woefully unprotected.

The Chilean ambassador to the United Nations, Heraldo Munoz, said Chile does not need immediate international assistance to deal with the aftermath of the quake.

Foreign Minister Mariano Fernandez told reporters that Chile does not want random influxes of outside aid “to be a distraction” from disaster relief.

“Any aid that arrives without having been determined to be needed really helps very little,” he said.

The international community, including the United States, the European Union, China and leading international charities, said they stood ready to help if needed.

At least 1.5 million homes were damaged in the pre-dawn quake, highways were torn up and buildings reduced to rubble in the nation of 16 million people.

Power was out in the parts of the capital, but most phone service was restored after about five hours.

“The Chileans fortunately have the best-managed economy in the hemisphere and will be able to deal with this terrible adversity,” Goldman Sachs analyst Alberto Ramos told Reuters.

Unlike Haiti, looting began almost immediately in Chile.

Jacqueline van Rysselberghe, the mayor of Concepcion in southern Chile, near the epicenter, said the hard-hit city of 500,000 was “out of control” as the populace sacked supermarkets and drugstores.

“We have to eat,” a housewife told Chilean TV as a people toted milk cartons, washing machines and even plasma TVs out of looted stores.

“People have gone days without eating,” said looter Orlando Salazar.
“The only option is to come here and get stuff for ourselves.”

Police sprayed tear gas and hosed the looters with water canons.

Authorities have asked the Chilean government to send in the armed forces to control the situation, the Folha of Sao Paulo news service reported.

Across town, about sixty people were missing in the rubble of a virtually new 14-story building that collapsed.

Many corpses were pulled from the wreckage, but also 22 survivors, local media reported.

“Time is of the essence to save the people inside this building,” van Rysselberghe said.

Santiago airport was damaged and remains closed.

Most of the buildings that collapsed were older -- including many historic structures.

Secretary of State Clinton is leaving for a five-day Latin American tour Sunday evening. She had been scheduled to visit Santiago Monday, but her itinerary is now likely to change.