DICHATO, Chile (AlertNet) Â? Eight kilometres inland from the coastal town of Dichato a group of firemen poke the muddy grassland with long poles.
They painstakingly scour for the dead, hoping to find the bodies of 26 people from Dichato thought to have been washed up in the deadly waves triggered by the tsunami almost two weeks ago.
Nearby a large fishing boat sits near the main road, a sign of the shear force and magnitude of the waves that carried this boat kilometres away from the sea.
"There's always hope that bodies can still be found," said Guillermo Smith, one of 15 firemen searching for Dichato's missing. "The biggest need now for people is to find their loved ones."
The last body, a resident from Dichato, was found several days ago.
In Dichato, one of many tourist towns along Chile's Pacific coast wiped out by the Feb.27 earthquake and tsunami, the heavy earth moving machines have moved in.
Some areas in the town are still reserved for the search and rescue teams to look for the dead. But in a few days, the search will stop and the debris clearing machines will clear the hundreds of wrecked wooden houses ripped from their foundations and flown across the town during the tsunami.
At the local church, one of the few buildings to survive the onslaught of huge waves, a list of the town's 17 confirmed dead is pinned to the church gates.
The church is being used as a store house for aid. Huge piles of clothes, food and toiletries donated by Chileans from across the country have arrived to Dichato and other coastal towns destroyed by the tsunami.
Chileans have rallied around quake and tsunami survivors, and millions of dollars has been raised in a recent telethon.
"Everything I have now has been given to me by the solidarity and kindness shown to survivors by the people," said local resident, Germana Monsalves.
She is one of 300,000 Chileans who have lost their homes, following one of the worldÂ?s strongest quakes, according to government estimates. So far, around 20,000 new homes have been built since the 8.8 magnitude quake struck.
Two weeks on from the disaster, some of DichatoÂ?s 3,500 residents who fled to the surrounding forested hills to escape the tsunami remain there. They are too afraid to descend.
"ThereÂ?re people still camping out in the hills who donÂ?t want to come down because theyÂ?re too traumatised," said Monsalves pushing back the tears.
Intermittent strong aftershocks keep Chileans living in fear. Dichato residents, like other coastal communities, re-lived moments of panic as the navy issued a tsunami alert on Thursday following a 7.2 magnitude aftershock.
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The local school in Dichato is barely recognisable amid the huge piles of debris. Nearly 40 percent of schools in quake-affected regions concentrated in central and southern Chile have been damaged or destroyed, says the government.
Around 1,250,000 children have no school to go to and rebuilding schools could reach over $1 billion, according to government estimates. Mobile schools sent from Canada are being set up in some coastal towns.
The first days of the newly elected government of Sebastian Pinera has been dominated with emergency meetings with ministers and army chiefs. Government efforts are focused on setting up a new tsunami alert system, while ministers struggle to determine the cost of the reconstruction effort, which some government officials say could reach $30 billion.
On the edge of Dichato town, a small group of tents line the main road where dozens of the homeless are living. They survive on food handouts from residents in nearby towns and a water tank provided by the government.
Margarita Flores lives with her family of six and baby granddaughter in two tents given to her by a family. Volunteers helped her build a congregated roof salvaged from the rubble to cover the tents from the coming rains in April.
"We have survived so far because of the kindness of strangers," 60-year-old Flores said.
The small family home she had saved up her working life to buy, was near the beach overlooking the picturesque bay of Dichato. There is nothing left.
She expects to be living in a tent for months and says getting back some resemblance of normal life will take time.
"We are living day by day," Flores said. "The future is uncertain."
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