One of the largest earthquakes ever recorded tore apart houses, bridges and highways in central Chile on Saturday and sent a tsunami racing halfway around the world. Chileans near the epicenter were tossed about as if shaken by a giant, and the head of the emergency agency said authorities believed at least 300 people were dead.

The magnitude-8.8 quake was felt as far away as Sao Paulo in Brazil – 1,800 miles to the east. The full extent of damage remained unclear as scores of aftershocks – one nearly as powerful as Haiti’s devastating Jan. 12 earthquake – shuddered across the disaster-prone Andean nation.

An 8.8 earthquake is more powerful than the largest nuclear bomb ever tested, officials told CBS News. Paul Caruso, of the U.S. Geological Survey, told CBS News correspondent Seth Doane that Chile’s quake was much bigger than the one that rocked Haiti last month — releasing 500 times more energy.

« If the epicenter was near a populated town, the town would be utterly destroyed, » said Caruso. « Fortunately in this case, the epicenter was off the coast. And the people of Chile have experience with earthquakes and they were well prepared for this one. »

President Michelle Bachelet declared a « state of catastrophe » in central Chile but said the government has not asked for assistance from other countries. If it does, President Obama said, the United States « will be there. » Around the world, leaders echoed his sentiment.

Mr. Obama said the U.S. is ready to assist Chile in rescue and recovery efforts. He said the U.S. has resources that are in position to deploy should the Chilean government ask for U.S. assistance.

In Chile, newly built apartment buildings slumped and fell. Flames devoured a prison. Millions of people fled into streets darkened by the failure of power lines. The collapse of bridges tossed and crushed cars and trucks, and complicated efforts to reach quake-damaged areas by road.

« It was absolutely frightening. Absolutely terrifying. I really thought it was the end of the world, » Cecilia Lagos told CBS News via Skype.

At least 214 people were killed and 15 were missing as of Saturday evening, Bachelet said in a national address on television. While that remained the official estimate, Carmen Fernandez, head of the National Emergency Agency, said later: « We think the real figure tops 300. And we believe this will continue to grow. »

Bachelet also said 1.5 million people had been affected by the quake, and officials in her administration said 500,000 homes were severely damaged.

In Talca, just 65 miles from the epicenter, people sleeping in bed suddenly felt like they were flying through major airplane turbulence as their belongings cascaded around them from the shuddering walls at 3:34 a.m. (1:34 a.m. EST, 0634 GMT).

A deafening roar rose from the convulsing earth as buildings groaned and clattered. The sound of screams was confused with the crash of plates and windows.

Then the earth stilled, silence returned and a smell of moist dust rose in the streets, where stunned survivors took refuge.

A journalist emerging into the darkened street scattered with downed power lines saw a man, some of his own bones apparently broken, weeping and caressing the hand of a woman who had died in the collapse of a cafe. Two other victims lay dead a few feet (meters) away.

Also near the epicenter was Concepcion, one of the country’s largest cities, where a 15-story building collapsed, leaving a few floors intact.

« I was on the 8th floor and all of a sudden I was down here, » said Fernando Abarzua, marveling that he escaped with no major injuries. He said a relative was still trapped in the rubble six hours after the quake, « but he keeps shouting, saying he’s OK. »

Chilean state television reported that 209 inmates escaped from prison in the city of Chillan, near the epicenter, after a fire broke out.

In the capital of Santiago, 200 miles northeast of the epicenter, a car dangled from a collapsed overpass, the national Fine Arts Museum was badly damaged and an apartment building’s two-story parking lot pancaked, smashing about 50 cars whose alarms rang incessantly.

While most modern buildings survived, a bell tower collapsed on the Nuestra Senora de la Providencia church and several hospitals were evacuated due to damage.

Special Section: Earthquake in ChileChile Quake Doesn’t Compare to 1960 HorrorTsunami Hits Hawaii, Minimal DamageGeophysicist: Chile Shock Released 500x Energy of Haiti QuakeQuake Witness: A Roar Like a Freight TrainImages From Chile EarthquakeVideo: Chile in a « State of Catastrophe »

Santiago’s airport was closed, with smashed windows, partially collapsed ceilings and destroyed pedestrian walkways in the passenger terminals. The capital’s subway was shut as well, and transportation was further limited because hundreds of buses were stuck behind a damaged bridge.

Chile’s main seaport, in Valparaiso about 75 miles from Santiago, was ordered closed while damage was assessed. The state-run Codelco, the world’s largest copper producer, shut two of its mines, the newspaper La Tercera reported.

President-elect Sebastian Pinera angrily reported seeing some looting while flying over damaged areas. He vowed « to fight with maximum energy looting attempts that I saw with my own eyes. »

The jolt set off a tsunami that swamped San Juan Bautista village on Robinson Crusoe Island off Chile, killing at least five people and leaving 11 missing, said Guillermo de la Masa, head of the government emergency bureau for the Valparaiso region. He said the huge waves also damaged several government buildings on the island.

On the mainland, several huge waves inundated part of the major port city of Talcahuano, near the hard-hit city of Concepcion. A large boat was swept more than a block inland. Pinera flew over the area and said an unspecified number of people had died in Talacahuano.

Waves also flooded hundreds of houses in the town of Vichato, in the BioBio region.

The quake struck after concert-goers had left South America’s leading music festival in the coastal city of Vina del Mar, but it caught partiers leaving a disco.

It then raced across the Pacific, setting off alarm sirens in Hawaii, Polynesia and Tonga and prompting warnings across all 53 nations ringing the vast ocean.

Tsunami waves reached Hawaii, where experts said they could grow to 8 feet (2.5 meters). The U.S. Navy moved a half-dozen vessels out of Pearl Harbor as a precaution, according to Navy spokesman Lt. Myers Vasquez. Shore-side Hilo International Airport also was closed. In California, officials reported a 3-foot (1-meter) surge in Ventura Harbor 서울출장샵 pulled loose several navigational buoys.

About 13 million people live in the area where shaking was strong to severe, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. USGS geophysicist Robert Williams said the Chilean quake was hundreds of times more powerful than Haiti’s magnitude-7 quake, though it was deeper and cost far fewer lives.

More than 50 aftershocks topped magnitude 5, including one of magnitude 6.9.

The largest earthquake ever recorded struck the same area of Chile on May 22, 1960. The magnitude-9.5 quake killed 1,655 people and left 2 million homeless. It caused a tsunami that killed people in Hawaii, Japan and the Philippines and caused damage along the west coast of the United States.

Saturday’s quake matched a 1906 temblor off the Ecuadorean coast as the seventh-strongest ever recorded in the world.

And yet, says Vartan, « I’m a lot more sensitive than anyone would really know, and it’s definitely interesting to portray that in a character. »

As the star of ABC’s hour-long fall dramedy « Big Shots, » the former « Alias » secret agent is just one of a number of actors playing complex, 서울출장샵 emotionally evolved, heterosexual alpha males putting their softer side on display in prime time.

In the late 1990s, « Sex and the City » ushered in a new portrait of single women with their frank discussions of their sexual exploits, desires, fantasies and beliefs about men. Of late, however, it’s the less-fair sex going sensitive.

In a number of broadcast ensembles premiering this fall, men are opening up about issues beyond sports, money, power and sexual conquests. They’re expressing their feelings — often to other men — on fatherhood, intimacy and love.

One such series is ABC’s « Carpoolers, » which centers on commuter pals who commiserate about everything from their jobs and their wives (« If we don’t provide for our women, do they really need us? » queries one character) to their personal secrets (one confesses to losing his virginity to Air Supply’s syrupy ’80s ballad « All Out of Love. »)

« The whole idea behind the car pool is that anything can be said, » says co-star T.J. Miller. « It’s almost like the huddle before they go into the football game that is life. Then they go back into the huddle because there’s another game at home. So it’s guys trying to figure stuff out and wanting to get the perspective of other guys. »

Other series featuring men bonding include HBO’s popular comedy, « Entourage, » just renewed for a fifth season and CBS’ returning « Rules of Engagement, » highlighting the friendship of three men: one married, one engaged and one happily playing the field. Then there’s the new ABC sitcom, « Cavemen, » which follows a group of modern-day Cro-Magnon men who are far more enlightened than their counterparts in the days before fire.

« There’s a bit of an evolution, the idea of male bonding, which has always been around in entertainment, but in the past it was done with a little more machismo, » says Nicole Vecchiarelli, entertainment director of Details, a men’s fashion and lifestyle magazine. « But in the post metrosexual era guys bonding isn’t necessarily about guns and action and high testosterone activity. They’re exposing their more sensitive side because that’s a reflection of the typical urban male. »

Although the idea of the metrosexual man focused on outward appearances, where men were as conscious about the way they looked — and smelled — as women, « now it seems they can, on the inside, feel a little bit more like girls and that’s still OK, » adds Vecchiarelli.

The men in « Big Shots » are very in touch with their feminine sides. Vartan, Dylan McDermott, Joshua Malina and Christopher Titus play high-powered Manhattan CEOs with everything in the world they could want, except for stable relationships at home. In the pilot, the men groan so much about their dysfunctional marriages, their need for intimacy and fidelity, McDermott’s character declares: « Men. We’re the new women. »

Series creator and executive producer Jon Harmon Feldman believes that men are now having « to deal with traditional female issues of fidelity, rejection or the challenges of love or making relationships work. We’re trying to attack those (issues) in a way that is true to how men would deal with it and hopefully bring a glimpse into men that women might not ordinarily get. »

But « Carpoolers » scribe Kit Boss argues that there has to be a line drawn on all this male camaraderie. « I just wrote an episode that answers the question: Are they friend friends or car-pool friends? In the case of that story, we definitely looked for a way to undercut anything that felt too emotional or too sensitive. »

For example, one of the characters, happy to find out that they were more than car-pool pals, goes for a hug. « The guy he was going to hug said: ‘Whoa, we’re not girlfriends. We’re friends.’ … To me, the danger would be: Does this match the reality that I know? I generally find more humor in the inability to express one’s self … than in being able to be more highly evolved as a male. »

That’s how TV has traditionally handled the topic of men and their hearts, with humor. It was the case with the father and son stories of « The Andy Griffith Show » and « The Courtship of Eddie’s Father, » workplace comedies like « Barney Miller » and « Cheers, » buddy romps like, « The Odd Couple » or the long-running « Frasier. »

« Male bonding, from whatever perspective, there’s just something silly about it, » says « Rules » star Patrick Warburton. « Personally, with me, just hanging out with my buddies playing some golf, playing some poker and, of course when I get my drink on out in the barn and I’m watching DVDs of Pearl Jam or Alice in Chains, if you’re a female it’s got to be silly — the same way, you know, that you’re a guy and you’re watching ‘Sex and the City, »‘ he says, laughing.

Generally, dramas featuring sensitive men have had a tough time garnering large audiences, female or male. HBO’s comedy « The Mind of a Married Man » (2001) only lasted a season. And of the 2006 releases: NBC’s sitcom « Four Kings, » CBS’ hour-long « Love Monkey, » and the ABC drama, « What About Brian, » all came and went.

« One of the things that I loved about Brian was that he was so much of who guys are, the modern man, a little more sensitive, a little more open about showing certain feelings, » says « What About Brian » lead Barry Watson. « I think the reason why ‘Brian’ still isn’t going on actually doesn’t have anything to do with that — at least I would hope not. »

« We still have a deep-seated need for the man being the rescuer, the man being the hero, » says Warren Farrell, author of numerous books on men, including the best-seller, « Why Men Are the Way They Are. » « We’re sending a huge mixed message to men. First we want the football player and then we blame him for being rough and insensitive with women. »

Kevin Kay, general manager and executive vice president of men’s cable network, Spike TV, contends that broadcast executives — driven by advertisers — have long been interested in courting female audiences, so shows about men need to appeal to women. « I think that for advertisers, safer, cleaner, not as risky, not as edgy, more mainstream … that tends to fall more into the category of shows that women want to watch. »

« The Sopranos, » to some extent, « is a good example of that, » says Kay. « The way Tony Soprano and his guys hung out … you see the way guys talk to guys when nobody else is around. That’s the ability of cable TV to be a little more edgy. »

« Big Shots’  » Feldman realizes that « there’s a natural skepticism among men to embrace male characters unless you can prove to them that they are real men, which I think to men means they are not overly indulgent with their feelings. So you’re kind of walking a line. You want to write men that women find appealing and also men find appealing, which is sometimes paradoxical. That’s the challenge. »