The north Chilean town of Tocopilla, the one affected the most by the earthquake, has running water and electricity again after the supplies were restored on Friday, but the main issue now is the absence of food supplies.  

Tocopilla, a town with 24,000 inhabitants, was hit on Wednesday by a quake which measured 7.7 on the Richter scale and on Tuesday by a strong aftershock which measured 6.8. At least two hundred people died in the earthquake and 140 were injured. The homes of about 15,000 were wrecked in the north Chilean desert.

Friday morning, hundreds of people left homeless by the quake gathered round the provincial government's office in Tocopilla to demand voucher that the police would exchange for food.

"We need something to eat, because my husband works at the beach but the roads are blocked and who knows for how long he is not going to be able to work," one local told Chile's Radio Cooperativa, the Deutsche Press Agentur said.

Chilean President Michelle Bachelet visited the devastated region and promised that the government will make efforts to rebuild their homes. On Friday, the authorities initiated the demolition operation of hundreds of homes.

Thousands of people which became homeless overnight are now sleeping in tents on the streets near their homes that were reduced to rubble.  

The 7.7 magnitude earthquake was centered 780 miles north of Santiago, the U.S. Geological Survey informed. According to the USGS it occurred about 37.3 miles beneath the surface. More precisely, it was centered in the village of Quillahua, near Calama, site of the large Chuquicamata copper mine situated in the Andes.

The area hit by the quake is very rich in copper and several large mines are functioning there. Chile is the biggest copper producer in the world and it provides more than a third of the annual supplies. As a result, Copper futures in New York jumped by as much as 3.2 percent after the news of the earthquake that struck the South American country reached the U.S.