Dev­as­tat­ing earth­quakes rocked Chile and Ar­genti­na hours apart yes­ter­day caus­ing death, de­struc­tion and fires. In the wee hours of the morn­ing, Chile ex­pe­ri­enced an 8.8 mag­ni­tude earth­quake which last­ed for more than one minute. In­ter­na­tion­al news re­ports said that around 3.34 am, (Chile) the earth­quake ripped apart hos­pi­tals and apart­ments. The death toll at 4.30 pm (T&T) was 147. Short­ly af­ter the quake, 78 peo­ple were said to be dead. Res­cue work was on its way and cit­i­zens rushed to gro­cery stores to stack up on sup­plies. The earth­quake which hit Ar­genti­na was record­ed as 6.3 in mag­ni­tude. How­ev­er, the earth­quake which hit Chile was fol­lowed by sev­er­al af­ter­shocks, which in­clud­ed one mea­sured at 6.9.

Mak­ing mat­ters worse was a tsuna­mi which hit the Robin­son Cru­soe is­land off the Latin Amer­i­can coun­try. Evac­u­a­tions were un­der­way as a vil­lage on the is­land was half flood­ed and dam­aged. Pres­i­dent Michelle Bachelet was on sight at the Na­tion­al Dis­as­ter Cen­tre to as­sist. Short­ly af­ter the quake, the Pa­cif­ic Tsuna­mi Warn­ing Cen­tre is­sued a warn­ing along the coast of Chile and Pe­ru. A warn­ing was al­so is­sued for Colom­bia, Ecuador, among oth­ers. Ter­ri­ble earth­quakes have been oc­cur­ring this year be­gin­ning with Haiti's 7.0 quake which killed more than 200,000 peo­ple. Some na­tions un­der a tsuna­mi ad­vi­so­ry, ar­eas of con­cern: Hawai­ian Is­lands, French Poly­ne­sia, Aus­tralia, Japan. (ML)