By Mario Naranjo
CONCEPCION, Chile (Reuters) - Looters raided more stores in this ravaged city on Monday as thousands of Chilean troops struggled to restore order after a huge earthquake and tsunamis killed more than 700 people.
Parts of Chile's second-largest city of Concepcion resembled a battle zone as looting and robbery spread and military armoured personnel carriers patrolled the streets. One supermarket stormed by looters later caught fire.
Looters also raided a fire station looking for water and gasoline as shortages of basic goods continued more than two days after a 8.8-magnitude quake devastated towns across central Chile and sent tsunamis barrelling into coastal communities.
"The looters are more organized," said Concepcion's mayor, Jacqueline Van Rysselberghe, who asked the central government to reinforce Concepcion with more troops.
Some shop owners and residents organized small groups and armed themselves with sticks to fend off looters.
President Michelle Bachelet, who condemned the "pillage and criminality", has dispatched 7,000 soldiers and imposed curfews to restore order, and said her government was sending emergency food and medicine supplies to those hardest hit.
The devastating quake struck as Latin America's most stable economy was trying to recover from a recession brought on by the global financial crisis. The total economic damage from the quake could exceed $15 billion, the catastrophe risk firm AIR Worldwide said on Monday.
The death toll stands at 723 and is expected to rise, but both the human and economic cost could have been a lot worse given the size of the quake, one of the world's biggest in the past century. It was many times more powerful than the one that hit Haiti in January, killing well over 200,000 people.
Chile is the world's leading copper producer and global prices moved sharply higher amid supply fears on Monday, but most of the country's major mines were unaffected and others that at first suspended output have steadily resumed operations.
Power cuts and mangled roads as well as looting have slowed relief operations and could undermine efforts to get the economy moving again. The central bank said it would keep interest rates at record lows to help stimulate the economy.
Looting first broke out over the weekend, and Bachelet's government has responded by imposing a curfew in Concepcion and the nearby region of Maule.
DEVASTATION
Surging waves triggered by the quake smashed houses and cars in fishing villages on the country's long Pacific coast. In the town of Constitucion alone, 350 people are believed to have died and a public gym was turned into a makeshift morgue.
In a rare piece of good news, rescuers found signs of life on Monday in a collapsed apartment block in Concepcion, the nearest major city to the epicentre of the quake.
Workers heard knocking and other sounds beneath the ruins of the 14-storey building and were drilling into the rubble to try to reach the possible survivors. About 60 people were thought to have been killed when the block crumbled.
"We have good news, there are signs of people still alive inside," said fire-fighter commander Juan Carlos Subercaseaux.
Still, many people were missing in the worst-hit regions, and a small plane bringing aid to Concepcion crashed on Monday, killing all six people on board, Chilean media reported.
In many coastal towns, houses were torn from their foundations, cars tossed around and the ground was covered in shattered wood and wet mud.
"More than 75 percent of the village is destroyed," said David Merino, a community leader in the town of Dichato. "After the earthquake, there were three waves. The first two were big and didn't do much damage, but the last one almost wiped the village off the map."
Dazed residents wandered around the picturesque tourist town, trying to salvage possessions from ruined homes.
"We don't have anything. We lived by fishing and lost everything. How are we going to live?" said 50-year-old fisherman Jose Castillo, holding his fishing knife and a bag as he scoured the ruins of the town for food and water.
Throughout the region, families struggled to get basic supplies and protect themselves.
"There are mothers without diapers or milk for their infants, and we don't have any water or electricity," said Paz Sanchez, 18, as she filled buckets with water from a tanker truck in the town of Talca.
ECONOMIC TREMORS
Chile's blue-chip stock index fell 1.18 percent, but the peso currency recovered from an early 1.5 percent decline and posted a slight gain.
Copper prices jumped more than 5 percent early on Monday on concerns about possible supply disruptions from Chile, although they later trimmed gains and ended about 3 percent higher.
Most of Chile's biggest copper mines affected by the quake slowly resumed operations, and the country's ports were also running, but analysts said limited power supplies could curtail exports and further lift copper prices.
Two oil refineries remained closed, buoying the gas oil market.
Some economists predicted a deep impact on Chile's economy after the quake damaged industrial and agricultural sectors in the worst-hit regions, but said the country's solid fiscal position would help reconstruction efforts.
"Chile has ample resources abroad to help finance the cost of its rebuilding efforts," Credit Suisse said. "Alternatively, it should be in a comfortable position to tap external and/or local debt markets."
(Additional reporting by Simon Gardner and Alonso Soto in Santiago; Writing by Stuart Grudgings, Helen Popper and Kevin Gray; Editing by Kieran Murray)
