CONCEPCION - The Chilean military's humanitarian aid effort hit the streets Thursday, carrying food and water to some areas that had seen little of either since a mammoth earthquake struck five days ago. Soldiers filled trucks with plastic bags of cooking oil, flour and canned beans, and municipal crews delivered the packages Wednesday to areas secured by troops from looters. The humanitarian role for Chile's army marked a shift for a military long associated with dictatorship-era repression. Survivors cheered the troops' arrival and the restoration of order in streets still littered with rubble, downed power lines and destroyed cars. But some criticized that the first place in Concepcion to get an aid delivery was a street of houses inhabited by military families. "This entire block belongs to the army," Yanira Cifuentes, 31, said of the houses on General Novoa Avenue. She said her husband is an officer. Cifuentes said the aid was welcome after days of sleeping in tents and sharing food with neighbors over a wood fire. But she also said the neighborhood hadn't gone hungry because residents had access to food at the regiment. Military officers who refused to give their names insisted their families were suffering, too, and said many soldiers have been working around the clock since the quake not knowing how their loved ones fared. Saturday's magnitude-8.8 quake and tsunami ravaged a 700-kilometer (435-mile) stretch of Chile's Pacific coast. Downed bridges and damaged or debris-strewn highways made transit difficult if not impossible in many areas. The official death toll reached 802 on Wednesday. After days of looting, rifle-toting soldiers occupied nearly every block of hard-hit Concepcion on Wednesday, enforcing a curfew that expired at noon. With the streets more secure, they focused on aid.
