“Today we’re better prepared,” Pinera said. “I think we’ve learned the lesson of Feb. 27, 2010.”

Rodrigo Ubilla, the vice interior minister, said the navy had “totally discounted any risk of a tsunami.”

Still, the strong earthquake frightened many Chileans, especially along the coast, where people quickly moved to higher ground.

“There was a preventive self-evacuation,” said Vicente Nunez, who directs the National Emergency Office, ONEMI. But he said Chileans could safely return home.

Residents fled their homes in Talcahuano, a port city whose center was ravaged last year by huge walls of water that sent shipping containers and fishing boats into downtown buildings and streets, municipal spokesman Javier Gonzalez told The Associated Press.

Skyscrapers swayed in the capital of Santiago, and in the inland town of Cauquenes, mothers ran into the streets carrying babies in their arms.

The earthquake struck offshore, about 30 miles (45 kilometers) north of the city of Concepcion. The epicenter was relatively close to the coast, at 36 degrees south latitude and 73 degrees west longitude — almost exactly where the Feb. 27, 2010 earthquake was centered. Friday’s quake was half as deep, at 11 miles (18 kilometers), as the devastating temblor of Feb. 27, 2010.

And while last year’s massive quake killed at least 521 people and left 200,000 homeless, this time it seemed that Chile emerged relatively unscathed.

People in Talcahuano weren’t taking any chances in any case. The compact city center is at the base of a bay and surrounded by hills, forming a bowl where the ocean drained and then came back with a vengeance last year.

Friday’s quake caused a blackout in Concepcion, another city still recovering from last year’s disaster. And across the country, Chileans jammed cell phone networks trying to make sure their families were OK.

In Cauquenes, a small town almost directly west of the epicenter, mothers ran into the streets carrying babies in their arms.

“I was really frightened. This is one of the strongest aftershocks we’ve had since last year’s earthquake,” said Ana Alarcon, who closed her small shop and took her two children in a search for her husband, who she couldn’t reach by phone.

Blakeman said Chile now can expect to feel “aftershocks of the aftershock.”

“It’s not a sign of anything different happening. But what does occur when you get these large aftershocks, typically we have a whole series of aftershocks again,” Blakeman said.

The temblor rocked buildings and shook windows in the capital, and provoked nervous smiles among dignitaries arriving for the ceremony at the congressional building in coastal Valparaiso. Bolivian President Evo Morales seemed briefly disoriented and Peru’s Alan Garcia joked that it gave them “a moment to dance.”

Buildings emptied and streets crowded with people seeking higher ground in coastal Constitucion, a city wiped out by the tsunami that followed the quake. Pinera planned to visit the city shortly after his swearing-in.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.

SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) — Two strongly felt earthquakes have rocked central Chile as dignitaries arrive for the inauguration of President-elect Sebastian Pinera.

The U.S. Geological Survey says the first quake had a preliminary magnitude of 5.1 and the second registered at 7.2. Both rocked buildings in the capital, shook windows and provoked nervous smiles among dignitaries arriving for Thursday’s ceremony at the congressional building in coastal Valparaiso.

Bolivian President Evo Morales seemed briefly disoriented. Peru’s Alan Garcia joked that it gave them “a moment to dance.”

“Chile is a country on the rise, economically strong, with many businesses. And because of this we expected more” of President Michelle Bachelet’s leftist administration, said Amanda Ruiz, a secretary in a construction firm. “We’re disillusioned.”

“I think he has the ability to do it,” said Luis Omar Cid Jara, 66, whose bakery and roast chicken shop on Dichato’s main street were destroyed.

Critics said Bachelet initially was reluctant to summon the military to stop looting and deliver aid, given the armed forces’ brutal repression of the Chilean left in the past, especially during the 1973-1990 dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet.

Pinera, who takes office March 11, stepped up his criticism of the outgoing president. He called Thursday for a sweeping modernization of Chile’s disaster system to eliminate what he called “the lack of coordination and the weaknesses that this tragedy has uncovered with brutal eloquence.”

Pinera named new governors for the six hardest-hit regions and told them to get to work even before his inauguration.

His immediate priorities: Find the missing; ensure law and order; restore utilities; and tend to the injured. Pinera said his administration will work more closely with the military on disasters than Bachelet, and he pledged to rebuild “with the most modern and efficient standards.”

Bachelet, whose approval ratings were sky-high before the quake, bristled at the criticism and insisted “Chile will rise” from the devastation.

Touring an aid distribution center in the heavily damaged city of Concepcion, Bachelet denied any delays or indecision in the hours following Saturday’s pre-dawn quake. Top military officers had complained they couldn’t deploy troops to quash looting or deliver aid until Bachelet finally declared a state of emergency more than 24 hours after the temblor.

Rescue and recovery were in full swing in Dichato, where firefighters used long poles to probe for bodies in huge piles of muddy sand and beach wreckage. The navy ferried troops ashore to help unload 86 tons of food.

Volunteers canvassed camps up in the hills created by people who abandoned their ruined property in town, fearing another tsunami because of frequent aftershocks. They handed out carloads of clothing and food.

The magnitude-8.8 quake — one of the strongest on record — and the tsunami that followed ravaged a 700-kilometer (435-mile) stretch of Chile’s Pacific coast and killed at least 802 people. Authorities have not said how many are missing but do say 2 million people were affected.

Bachelet said it could take at least three years to bring the region back.

“The country doesn’t deserve this. It’s going to be — it’s going to be very hard moving ahead,” she told ADN radio.

The army was flying in 320 tons of aid, and the navy was shipping 270 more tons to coastal towns cut off from the rest of Chile.

Dichato is nestled between pine-forested hills and a lovely sheltered bay where colorful fishing boats served coastal communities and export companies. Its residents proudly note their beach is the only one in the region where children could swim safely in the ocean. Its population of 4,000 triples each January and February with tourists — many were in town when disaster struck — and residents count on that brief summer vacation for much of their income.

The quake and tsunami killed at least 19 people in Dichato and smashed neat wooden houses and small hotels into huge splinter piles. The surge ruined most other buildings in town, which stank Thursday with decomposing fish. One fishing boat marooned far inland was full of rotting octopus.

The Bachelet government had made a difference in Dichato, building 130 neat mustard-yellow duplexes in a public housing project that just opened in September and providing 60 million pesos — $120,000 — to restore the facades of businesses along main street, said Mabel Gomez, president of the local chamber of commerce.

Gomez, 29, ran several small businesses, providing public baths on the beach, an Internet and phone center, and several small cabanas to tourists. But Dichato doesn’t have a bank, and like many business owners, Gomez lost the entire season’s profits — 6 million pesos, about $12,000 — she had planned to deposit later this month.

“Just like the government has helped other countries, now it has to help us here,” said Cid, the bakery and chicken shop owner. Booming profits from the state-owned Codelco mining company — which Bachelet zealously husbanded even as she spent more on social programs than any previous president — will have to be spent by Pinera on reconstruction, Cid said.

Chile has asked other countries and the United Nations for temporary bridges, field hospitals, satellite phones, electric generators, water purification systems, field kitchens and dialysis centers. Some 36 hospitals were either severely damaged or destroyed, Bachelet said Thursday.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon planned to meet both Bachelet and Pinera on Friday and tour Concepcion.

Pinera now plans an austere inaugural, with only brief stays by foreign dignitaries to enable police to focus on quake duty, and will fly to the disaster zone immediately after he is sworn in. Bachelet has canceled a farewell dinner planned for the eve of the inaugural.

——

Associated Press Writer Federico Quilodran in Santiago contributed to this report.

After the military takeover, and the abuse of human rights on a massive scale that it engendered, Chile retained the curiosity of diverse political and intellectual circles. The tragic example of a shattered democracy provided the spark for heated discussions and controversies in various countries. Chile’s sudden shifts in orientation yielded a relentless supply of fascinating political and economic phenomena and fueled the wider debate on development, democracy, and social change.

Valdes’ point is underlined and emphasized by the argument currently raging across the Internet concerning what credit to give Milton Friedman for the relatively low loss of life registered in Chile after the devastating earthquake of Feb. 27. The question of who might be responsible for Chile’s tough building codes is just the latest proxy for a much larger battle over ideology — the economic equivalent to the “culture wars” that have ravaged American society since at least the ’60s. The financial crisis has given this age-old struggle new juice. Few events have done more damage to the Chicago school’s intellectual primacy than the economic collapse of the past few years. On the old guard free market fundamentalist front, nerves appear to be stretched to the breaking point, perhaps explaining Bret Stephens’ foolhardy attempt to recover some ground by rehabilitating Friedman through a comparison between the government-enforced building codes, or lack thereof, existing in Chile and Haiti.

Naomi Klein, while reprising some points from her chapter on Chile in “The Shock Doctrine,” brings us the latest datum on that specific issue.

Chile’s modern seismic building code, drafted to resist earthquakes, was adopted in 1972. That year is enormously significant because it was one year before Pinochet seized power in a bloody US-backed coup. That means that if one person deserves credit for the law, it is not Friedman, or Pinochet, but Salvador Allende, Chile’s democratically elected socialist president.

Chile’s building codes were further extended and revised in the early ’90s, well after Pinochet lost power. But again, the real story here is not about building codes, it is the legacy of the kind of “natural experiment” that economists rarely get the opportunity to investigate in the real world: The first time extreme free market reforms were imposed on a society by fiat.

The Chicago boys, unhindered by dissent or pesky labor unions or a critical press, had a free hand and did not waste it. Greg Palast offered a pithy summary back in 2006.

“… the General abolished the minimum wage, outlawed trade union bargaining rights, privatized the pension system, abolished all taxes on wealth and on business profits, slashed public employment, privatized 212 state industries and 66 banks and ran a fiscal surplus.”

Tyler Cowen, the libertarian-minded economist at George Mason University, responded to Palast’s piece with his own report card on Pinochet, which he recently linked back to while disputing Paul Krugman’s take on Chile. Cowen pans Pinochet’s currency policies and is unenthusiastic about the privatization of Social Security but gives him high marks for opening up trade and privatizing major industries, agricultural diversification and restoring “the economic credibility of Chile.” He also argues that although “many economic mistakes were made” Pinochet’s “moderate and left-wing successors left virtually all of his economic policies in…”

But Cowen somewhat elides the fact that Pinochet was forced to reverse or at least partially roll back many of his reforms because their social cost was simply too great. The disparity in interpretations of Chile’s economic development is truly staggering but I don’t see too many people disputing that, particularly in the first ten years after Pinochet seized power, real wages fell for most Chileans, and unemployment and income inequality rose drastically. Per-capita GNP fell 6.4 percent over the course of the entire Pinochet regime. According to Palast, in response to a brutal recession in 1982, Pinochet restored the minimum wage, allowed collective bargaining, and instituted a classic Keynesian government jobs creation program.

That’s what Milton Friedman called “the miracle of Chile.” It’s really hard to imagine anything less deserving of the word.