© Mario Vilches AlcainoThe death toll stands at 214, but seems certain to rise.
A powerful new 6.1 magnitude aftershock struck just off the coast early on Sunday morning (local time) reinforcing those fears, rattling cities already devastated by Saturday's deadly quake.
The 8.8 magnitude quake, one of the world's most powerful in a century, hammered Chile, killing more than 300 people as it toppled buildings and mangled highways.
The clock is ticking on the search for survivors, with about 100 people feared trapped in just one collapsed apartment block in the city of Concepcion.
In Concepcion, the streets were strewn with crushed cars, fallen power lines and rubble from wrecked buildings. Residents were still without water or electricity and fuel supplies were running low.
Survivors are also becoming increasingly desperate for food with television images showing looters ransacking stores.
"We have to eat something," an unidentified woman told a TV reporter.
"People have gone days without eating," Concepcion resident Orlando Salazar said.
"The only option is to come here and get stuff for ourselves."
But the footage also raised the spectre of lawlessness as looters were shown carrying away boxes with food as well as washing machines and plasma TVs from stores in the city before police intervened.
While the apparently low death toll could be considered a lucky escape from such a strong temblor, it dealt a serious blow to infrastructure in the world's number one copper producer and one of Latin America's most stable economies.
The infrastructure breakdown is also hampering the rescue effort.
"We spent the whole night working, smashing through walls to find survivors. The biggest problem is fuel, we need fuel for our machinery and water for our people," Commander Marcelo Plaza, speaking in Concepcion, said.
President Michelle Bachelet estimated two million people in Chile were affected, adding it would take officials several days to evaluate the "enormous quantity of damage."
Daunting challenge
The government faces the task of helping rebuild an estimated half a million homes that were severely damaged as well as hundreds of buckled roads and collapsed bridges.
The quake has raised a daunting first challenge for billionaire Sebastian Pinera, who was elected Chile's president in January in a shift to the political right and who takes office in two weeks.
"We're preparing ourselves for an additional task, a task that wasn't part of our governing plan: assuming responsibility for rebuilding our country," he said late on Saturday.
"It's going to be a very big task and we're going to need resources."
Some economists predicted a deep impact on Chile's economy after the quake damaged its industrial and agricultural sectors in the worst-hit regions, possibly putting pressure on its currency.
Government officials said the copper industry had enough stocks to meet its commitments despite a production shutdown at two major mines due to the quake. Diesel imports were stepped up after damage forced the closure of two oil refineries.
Saturday's quake triggered tsunami waves that killed at least four people on Chile's Juan Fernandez islands and caused serious damage to the port town of Talcahuano, flooding streets and lifting fishing boats out of the sea.
On the other side of the Pacific, Japan's north-eastern coast registered waves of up to 1.2 meters, but officials later lowered the state of alert.
Hundreds of thousands of people in Japan, New Zealand, the Philippines and Russia's far eastern Kamchatka Peninsula were told to evacuate after the Chilean quake, but there were no immediate reports of damage.
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