Associated Press

CONCEPCION, Chile — The most powerful aftershock in six days sent terrified Chileans fleeing into quake-shattered streets and forced doctors to evacuate some patients from a major hospital on Friday as the nation struggled to comprehend the scope of the disaster that hit it.

People raced into the streets in pajamas as a magnitude-6.0 aftershock struck Concepcion shortly before dawn.

A magnitude-6.6 shock at 8:47 a.m. rattled buildings for nearly a minute. It was the strongest aftershock since a magnitude-6.9 jolt shortly after last Saturday’s historic quake.

Fearful that more buildings would collapse, officials evacuated some patients from the regional hospital in downtown Concepcion.

“They sent us all home,” said 47-year-old Aaron Valenzuela, who hobbled through the street because four toes had been amputated due to an injury he suffered in Saturday’s big quake.

Dr. Patricia Correa, who was overseeing the hospital’s emergency ward, said her part of the five-story building “is on the point of collapsing. The walls cracked.”

President Michelle Bachelet, meanwhile, met with her successor, Sebastian Pinera, and they promised to try to avoid letting the March 11 hand-over of power interrupt aid efforts.

“The new government will have an immense challenge,” Bachelet said.

Officials were still struggling to determine the human toll of the magnitude-8.8 quake, as well as the damage to roads, ports and buildings such as hospitals. Continued...

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Disaster officials announced they had double-counted at least 271 missing as dead in the hardest-hit part of the country — an error that would drop the official death toll to about 540 if there were no other mistakes.

But Interior Department officials said that from now on, they would release only the number of dead who had been identified: 279 as of Friday.

The government also said Friday it had removed Cmdr. Mariano Rojas as head of the Navy’s oceanographic service over its failure to issue a tsunami warning for the Pacific immediately after the Feb. 27 quake.

Port captains in several towns issued their own warnings, but a national alert never came, and some say that failure led to deaths. The tsunami is believed responsible for much of the deaths and damage.

Bachelet says it will take three years to rebuild the region wracked by the earthquake and tsunami, and that task is all too clear to the people trying to clean up the ruins of their towns.

In the tourist town of Dichato, a few miles north up the coast from Concepcion, the quake and tsunami killed at least 19 people and smashed neat wooden houses and small hotels into huge piles of splinters.

The town of 4,000 people stank Thursday of decomposing fish and a fishing boat marooned far inland was full of rotting octopus.

Constitucion suffered perhaps the greatest loss of life in the disaster, in part because many people had come for carnival celebrations and were caught in huge waves that reached the central plaza.

“There were about 200 people in tents who disappeared” on Isla Orrego, said Fire Chief Miguel Reyes.

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