A tremor with a magnitude of 8.8 devastated large parts of southern Chile and sent huge waves racing at up to 400 miles an hour across the Pacific. Isolated ocean islands were reported to have suffered severe wave damage, and tsunami warnings were issued across a vast area stretching from Russia and Japan through to the Philippines and New Zealand.
In the Chilean capital, Santiago, some five million woke up to "hell" as the earthquake, which struck in the small hours of Saturday morning, collapsed tower blocks and bridges and swallowed cars as it ripped cracks in the roads. Rescue many tower soaring blocks spoke of their terror as the buildings swayed and shook in the middle of the night.
"We are lucky to be alive," said Lloyd Edmondson, 27, a British businessman resident in Santiago. "We live on the 19th floor, the top floor of our building, and it was swinging like crazy. All the glasses, cabinets, paintings were smashed to pieces and the lift in the building fell from the 6th floor to the bottom floor and is ruined. Thank goodness nobody was in it.
"The noise of the rumbling was the most surreal thing. We could hardly even make it to the emergency stairs because the building was moving so much."
The Chilean government, which declared a state of "national catastrophe", put the death toll at 147 people. But with large parts of the country cut off, that figure is expected to rise. There were also unconfirmed reports of tsunami-related deaths on the sparsely-populated Juan Fernandez islands, off Chile's 2,700-mile long coastline. The archipelago, said to be the location that inspired Daniel Defoe's castaway novelRobinson Crusoe, was right in the tsunami's path and had little time to react to warnings.
"There is an enormous amount of damage (on the Juan Fernandez islands), but we don't know exactly much, we are still evaluating it," said Chile's president Michelle Bachelet, who appealed for calm as panic-stricken crowds in Santiago filled the streets in the middle of the night, many in their nightclothes.
The Chilean coastal town of Talca Juano was also hit by a wall of water which flooded streets. Other Pacific islands, including Easter Island and Hawaii, were put on emergency alert and organised partial evacuations of coastal communities. New Zealand issued an official warning of a wall of water up to 10 feet high, while in Hawaii, waves predicted to reach 16 feet were expected to arrive by 9pm British time.
Although the earthquake was nearly as powerful as the 9.2 magnitude tremor that triggered the Asian tsunami of 2004, in which around 200,000 people died, it was hoped that adequate early warnings would prevent a high death toll.
The earthquake struck at around 3.34am local time (6.43GMT). Its epicentre was a spot in the Pacific seabed around 75 miles from the Chilean coastal city of Concepcion, although the shock waves were powerful enough to be felt 1,000 miles away in Argentina. "We were in the living room, when suddenly the big lamp hanging from the ceiling started to move very fast making circles," said one Buenos Aires resident.
Sitting on one edge of what geologists call the Pacific "Ring of Fire", volcano-speckled Chile has a long history of earthquakes, thanks to its position on the cusp of two vast tectonic plates. A 9.5 magnitude tremor on 1960 was registered as the most powerful on the planet since records began a century ago, and in Santiago, tremors that shake cutlery at the dinner table and oblige schools to undertake emergency evacuation drills are seen as a part of life.
However, yesterday's quake, the result of faultline pressure that that been welling up for nearly two centuries, was one of the most violent in living memory. "It was like watching the end of the world," said Vicente Acuña, a 76-year-old shopkeeper from Talca, 65 miles from the epicentre.
Mario Riveros, a security guard at an industrial plant in Santiago, was standing by a bridge when it collapsed like a cardboard model. "I saw the cars falling into the water, and I didn't know what to do," he said. "I wanted to just cry."
Elba Carrizo, 81, crawled under the table of her house in the middle-class district of Maipu, while the building collapsed around her.
"I saved myself because I hid under the table, while everything came down on top of me," she said.
As one of Latin America's most modern and affluent cities, Santiago benefits from architecture that is designed to withstand earth tremors, with spring-loaded foundations that allow structures to sway and flex when the ground beneath them shakes. As a result, the city managed to escape the kind of wholesale destruction that took place in last month's earthquake in Haiti, which is estimated to have claimed some 200,000 lives.
"All buildings have to comply with very strict building regulations so that the structures can withstand earthquakes," said Chilean architect Monica Jarpa. "Our architects have to be real experts in building earthquake-resistant buildings. "An understanding of earthquakes is ingrained into our culture."
All the same, many older buildings were badly damaged, including the historic Nuestra Senora de la Providencia church, whose bell tower collapsed. An apartment building's two-level car park also flattened on to the ground floor, smashing about 50 cars whose alarms and horns rang incessantly. Several hospitals have been evacuated due to earthquake damage, and others were overwhelmed with injured people.
In the coastal city of Vina del Mar, the earthquake struck just as people were leaving a disco. "It was very bad, people were screaming, some people were running, others appeared paralysed," Julio Alvarez told Radio Cooperativa in Santiago.
The damage was thought to be greatest in the Concepcion area, which has a long history of suffering from the area's seismic volatility. The town was razed at least five times by earthquakes and tsunamis between the 16th and 18th centuries, with the naturalist, Charles Darwin, observing the "awful" aftermath of one devasting tremor in 1835.
Communications to the town were cut off, with local journalist Alejandra Gouet describing the situation as "chaos".
"Everyone was running out of their houses in their pyjamas to the central parks in the town," she said. "The chemistry department of the university was on fire, with huge flames in the sky visible all over the city.
"What surprised me most was that the newer buildings were badly damaged too. The streets are all damaged, with the pavements rising up at least one metre high and buckling."
The Foreign Office said it was checking as to whether any of the 65,000 British tourists and backpackers who visit Chile every year had been killed or injured in the quake.
In London, the Chilean ambassador, Rafael Moreno, was helping British-based Chileans make contact with their families, and hoping to hear from his 72-year-old sister, who lives in Concepcion.
"One girl studying for a degree in London phoned me because her family is on the spot where the earthquake reached almost nine," Mr Moreno said.
"She was in tears, so I told her I will personally do research about the family and I will call her as soon as I have information."
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