CONCEPCION - Chilean rescue crews fanned out with sniffer dogs on Wednesday around quake-ravaged cities and villages, some still hoping to find survivors and others facing the daunting task of recovering bodies buried under mountains of rubble. Four days after the 8.8-magnitude earthquake rocked south-central Chile and killed nearly 800 people, police and troops managed to quell the looting and violence that brought chaos to the hard-hit city of Concepcion, 70 miles southeast of the epicenter. An 18-hour nightly curfew remained in place in Concepcion, one of a handful of cities and villages where some 7,000 soldiers were patrolling the streets to keep order and ensure that food and water were properly distributed. Military trucks and helicopters in a base in the quake-hit city of Talca set off with food and water for victims, while rescue crews stepped up the search in towns from Concepcion further north to Constitucion for any survivors trapped in the debris. At dawn, firemen with hammers and cranes searched for people trapped in a building that had collapsed in Concepcion. So far, 795 people have been confirmed dead, either killed by one of the world's biggest earthquakes in a century or the tsunami it triggered along Chile's coastline. The death toll is likely to rise, with some reports putting the number of missing as high as 500 in Constitucion alone. The city, with a population of nearly 40,000, accounts for nearly half the official death toll and was one of several coastal towns nearly wiped out by the quake and tsunamis. Chilean emergency officials and the military blamed each other for not clearly warning coastal villages of tsunamis after the quake.
