Chilean earthquake: Eyewitness accounts

BBC News website readers sent their eyewitness accounts of the earthquake which struck northern Chile on Monday.

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Pablo Volenski, from Iquique, which is 115km (70 miles) from the epicentre, described a "terrible" experience.

I was sitting at the computer and my sister was sitting watching TV beside me, when suddenly it started.

It was a very strong tremor, which I have never experienced before in my life.

Walls from surrounding houses started cracking, glass started to break, and cars started jumping

The north of Chile is a region where tremors are very common, so at the beginning I did nothing, but when the electricity went out, and the walls started cracking, I took my sister in one arm and we went running downstairs to the door.

The earthquake lasted very long. It was eternal and that made it more terrible.

Once I was standing in the doorway, I could see that the electricity had gone out throughout the whole city.

Walls from surrounding houses started cracking, glass started to break, and cars started jumping.

After that, the city was a complete disorder. There were people running, and there was no electricity, no radio signal, no TV, no internet, nothing.

Telephones were also off. There was complete panic.

But the most terrible scenes of the earthquake were in small towns east of Iquique.

For example, in the town of Huara, more than 60% of houses were reportedly destroyed.

Fortunately today normality and calm has returned to the city.

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Eduardo Veliz, also from Iquique, said he witnessed a scene of chaos.

Everyone was running into the streets in fear.

People were afraid that buildings were about to collapse and many feared a tsunami would follow.

Everyone started crying and running

I'm a university instructor and was about to start my class when the earthquake struck.

The city was in chaos.

The lights went out immediately and many of my students had a fit of hysterics.

Everyone started crying and running out of the class.

We got all of the students downstairs and out of the building.

The streets were chaotic and it took me about 40 minutes to walk home as there were no buses running.

I had to wait for five hours to get in contact with my family, who live in the neighbouring town of Altho Hospicio.

The road connecting the two towns had been blocked by rocks, which had killed five people and telephone communication was impossible.

There was less damage and less injuries suffered here in Iquique than in some of the smaller villages inland.

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Anna Rooke, from Surrey, England, was travelling on a bus from Arica to Iquique when the earthquake struck.

The bus stopped abruptly, and all the locals on the bus were craning their heads to see what was going on. Lots of the men got off the bus.

Then I noticed that people were moving rocks from in front of the bus and there was lots of debris on the road.

As we carried on, the bus continued to stop to move more rocks out of the way and I also noticed cracks in the road.

Many buildings were damaged across northern Chile

There was even talk of a tsunami in Iquique which concerned me as I thought there might be more danger ahead of us.

It seemed unlikely that we were actually going to be able to make it to Iquique on account of the road being closed up ahead, but somehow we got through and made it a couple of hours later than expected.

Things were pretty chaotic when we arrived as lots of people who work in the city have homes inland where the epicentre of the quake was and were leaving the city to check on their houses and families.

I was lucky enough to be escorted to a nearby hotel by a policeman who was on my bus as it was late and there didn't seem to be any taxis.

I went to bed feeling a little uneasy as the receptionist had warned me of aftershocks and told me to leave my light on, so I made sure I planned an exit route out of the window in case of emergencies.

However, apart from a minor tremor this morning, nothing else has happened and things seem to be more or less back to normal in the city.

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Santiago Fernandez, from Arica, was at university when the ground began to shake.

At the moment the earthquake hit, we had trouble walking and leaving the classroom, as the movement was so terrible.

It was long, around a minute, and noisy.

Suddenly the lights went out and we heard the sound of police sirens and ambulances.

I walked downtown because the university is really close to the sea and we were afraid a tsunami would follow.

Taxis were out of service.

People were shocked and some of them were loading trucks with their stuff and leaving town.

I met a couple of guys from the Netherlands, and I told them, jokingly, that it was just a small earthquake.

There were broken windows and clouds of dust everywhere.