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 Photos showed houses washed away by swirling waters, cars tossed into shattered buildings and boats lifted into the streets in coastal towns including Pelluhue and Constitución. Giant waves set off by the quake crashed hundred of meters into these coastal towns near the epicenter, demolishing houses and sending residents fleeing into the hills.
"It's an enormous catastrophe ... there's a growing number of missing people," Bachelet said, the President of Chile. Adding that food and medical aid was being sent to help the people affected by the quake.
This city of 55,000, whose death toll is expected to exceed 500, may well be the community hardest hit by the magnitude 8.8 quake that struck Chile. The temblor was quickly followed by Pacific Ocean waves that officials in Constitución say reached 30 feet in height. The earthquake knocked down and damaged hundreds of buildings here while the ensuing tsunami cut a 1 1/2 -mile swath of destruction through the town, dragging everything and everyone in its wake as the Maule River surged with seawater.
 The once heavily populated coastal zone, where vacationers and residents have long strolled on a seaside walk, is a jumbled mass of debris. More than 90% of the city's downtown buildings were destroyed.
On Monday, there was no electricity, phone service or running water; bodies remained trapped in collapsed buildings. The dead are being laid out in silver-colored vinyl bags on a school basketball court that has been transformed into a makeshift morgue.
Victor Lucero, 50, stood outside an adobe building where, he said, his daughter, son-in- law and two grandchildren lay entombed. He flashed a color photograph of the children, Giovanny, 7, and Constanza, 4, that he showed to anyone who stopped to talk. Both were killed when the residence collapsed, he said.
 The island in the back of the painting is the "Isla Orrego" were several hundred people, many of them families with children, were visiting this small island to celebrate the end of summer when Chile's worst earthquake in decades struck and caused huge ocean waves. Five days later, fisherman Mario Leal stares into the distance and mourns the families who were there, including his wife and two young children. "Everyone died there, whole families of 10 to 12 people who were camping," said the 30-year-old, still clearly in shock. "I lost everything. All my family and my house."
Orrego Island stands in the mouth of the river Maule that flanks the central Chilean town of Constitucion. The official death toll for the town stands at 350, but witnesses say hundreds of people from Orrego and other coastal areas are missing, which suggests that the nationwide death toll of just over 800 will rise. Rescue officials in the region say they are not keeping record of people reported to have disappeared, even though some have estimated that up to 500 people could be missing. About eight people on Orrego survived the ocean's onslaught, according to media reports, some of them by climbing trees moments before waves several meters high rolled in. The bodies of those who didn't make it were still washing up on the shore on Thursday.
 "I felt the tremor and swam across the river to look for a boat to help my family," said Leal, who buried his wife on Wednesday but has not found the bodies of his 7- and 9-year-old children.
Hundreds of people were visiting the sparsely inhabited island to celebrate the "Noche Veneciana" festival that marks the end of summer in the Southern Hemisphere.
"Most of the people didn't have time to escape. Everyone was waiting for the start of a firework show," Patricia Franco, a 50-year-old teacher, was quoted as saying by Chile's El Mercurio newspaper.
One of the few confirmed survivors from Orrego, 23-year-old Mariela Rojas managed to get a lifejacket onto her 2-year-old son and held him tight as the wave washed them 20 km (12 miles) inland where they where finally rescued. "I clung to him and just let the wave take us," she said.
My heart is in deep sorrow for the people of Chile,
Clina Polloni 
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