Update 1: Massive earthquake hits Chile, 214 dead

CONCEPCION, Chile,  (Reuters) – One of the world’s  most powerful earthquakes in a century battered Chile today, killing at least 214 people, knocking down buildings  and triggering a tsunami that threatened Pacific coastlines as  far away as Hawaii and Russia.
Buildings caught fire, bridges collapsed and debris blocked  streets across swathes of central Chile, but the initial death  toll was relatively low from a quake packing many times more  power than the one that devastated Haiti last month.
A 15-storey building collapsed in Concepcion, the closest  major city to the epicenter, and overturned cars lay scattered  below a fallen overpass in the capital Santiago. Telephone and  power lines went down, making it difficult to assess the full  extent of the damage and loss of life.
The government said at least 214 people were killed in the  8.8-magnitude quake, which struck at 3:34 a.m. (0634 GMT),  sending people rushing from their beds and onto the streets in  fear, hugging each other and crying.
“It came in waves and lasted so long. Three minutes is an  eternity. We kept worrying that it was getting stronger, like a  terrifying Hollywood movie,” said Santiago housewife Dolores  Cuevas.
One emergency official said the number of deaths was  unlikely to increase dramatically, and a U.S. Geological Survey  researcher attributed the low toll to Chile’s solid building  standards.
But it was the fifth-largest earthquake since 1900 and  dealt a blow to the economy and infrastructure of the world’s  No. 1 copper producer and one of Latin America’s most developed  and stable countries.
“This will be a major blow to the country’s infrastructure;  there has been major damage to roads, airports, which are now  suspended, ports and also in housing,” Chilean President-elect  Sebastian Pinera said.
The quake halted operations at two oil refineries and two  major copper mines and the government said an estimated half a  million homes were severly damaged.
President Michelle Bachelet said a huge wave hit the Juan  Fernandez islands, an archipelago where Scottish sailor  Alexander Selkirk was marooned in the 18th century, inspiring  the novel Robinson Crusoe.
“There was a series of waves that got bigger and bigger,  which gave people time to save themselves,” pilot Fernando  Avaria told TVN television by telephone from the main island.  Three people were killed and four missing there, he said.
Tsunami warnings were posted around the Pacific, including  the U.S. state of Hawaii, Japan and Russia. The U.S. Navy said  it was pulling six ships out of Hawaii’s Pearl Harbor ahead of  the tsunami, which was expected to hit the island at heights of  up to 8 feet (2.4 meters).
Unusually big waves battered Ecuador’s Galapagos Islands,  where residents were moved to higher ground as a precaution.
Bachelet said residents were evacuated from coastal areas  of Chile’s remote Easter Island, a popular tourist destination  in the Pacific famous for its towering Moai stone statues.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the earthquake struck 70  miles (115 km) northeast of Concepcion at a depth of 22 miles  (35 km).
An earthquake of magnitude 8 or over can cause “tremendous  damage,” the USGS says. The Jan. 12 quake that devastated  Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince and killed well over 200,000  people was measured as magnitude 7.0.
DAMAGE TO CAPITAL, MAJOR MINES
Chile’s capital of Santiago, about 200 miles (320 km) north  of the epicenter, was also badly hit. The international airport  was closed for at least 24 hours as the quake destroyed  passenger walkways and shook glass out of doors and windows.
“I thought I’d blown a tire … but then I saw the highway  moving like it was a piece of paper and I realized it was  something much worse,” said one man who was forced to abandon  his car on a wrecked highway overpass.
Codelco, the world’s largest copper producer, suspended  operations at its El Teniente and Andina mines, but reported no  major damage and said it expected the mines to be up and  running in the “coming hours.”
Production was halted at the Los Bronces and El Soldado  copper mines, owned by Anglo American Plc, but Chile’s biggest  copper mine, Escondida, was operating normally.
Chile produces about 34 percent of world supply of copper,  which is used in electronics, cars and refrigerators.
Local television showed a building in flames in Concepcion,  one of Chile’s largest cities with around 670,000 inhabitants.  Some residents looted pharmacies and a collapsed grains silo,  hauling off bags of wheat, television images showed.
At least 269 prisoners took advantage of the quake to  escape from a prison about 250 miles (450 km) south of  Santiago, police said. Twenty-eight of the inmates were  captured and three shot.
Broken glass and chunks of concrete and brick were strewn  across roads and several strong aftershocks rattled jittery  residents in the hours after the initial quake.
“It was like we were being shaken around in a box,” said  Claudia Rosario, a 27-year-old receptionist in Temuco, about  175 miles (280 km) south of Concepcion. She said residents  there were without water and electricity.
“But thank God it was just small things (broken). It could  have been worse.”
There were blackouts in parts of Santiago. Emergency  officials said buildings in the historic quarters of two  southern cities, mainly made of adobe, had been badly damaged  and local radio said three hospitals had partially collapsed.
The magnitude 9.5 earthquake of 1960, the largest  earthquake worldwide in the last 200 years, spawned a tsunami  that engulfed the Pacific Ocean. About 1,600 lives were lost in  Chile and the tsunami took another 200 lives in Japan, Hawaii  and the Philippines
In 1960, Chile was hit by a 9.5-magnitude earthquake, one  of the biggest ever recorded. It devastated the city of  Valdivia, killed 1,655 people, and sent a tsunami that  continued as far as Hawaii, Japan and the Philippines.
Today’s quake shook buildings as far away as Argentina’s  Andean provinces of Mendoza and San Juan. A series of strong  aftershocks rocked Chile’s coastal region from Valdivia in the  south to Valparaiso, about 500 miles (800 km) to the north.
President Barack Obama called Bachelet and said the United  States stood ready to help Chile. He also urged Americans to  heed warnings about a possible tsunami that could affect the  U.S. West Coast and Hawaii.