LIMA, Peru (CNS) -- As Salvador Pinera takes office as president of Chile, his main task will be to oversee the country's recovery from the strong earthquake Feb. 27 that left a large area of the country in shambles.

With quake damage estimated at $15 billion or more, Pinera's March 11 inauguration was planned without the elaborate celebrations that usually accompany such events.

Meanwhile, church workers say the economic figures do not reveal the human tragedy of the disaster.

In the rural area of Rancagua, near the epicenter of the magnitude 8.8 earthquake, "There is considerable damage. Families are terribly affected. People are only surviving thanks to assistance" from churches, the government and aid organizations, said Cesar Morales, who heads the Rancagua diocesan social pastoral and Caritas office.

In the diocese of about 600,000 people, 19,000 families lost their homes and 22,000 houses were damaged, Morales told Catholic News Service in a telephone interview.

"We still don't know the full extent of the disaster," he said. As of March 10, the government put the death toll nationwide at 528.

Many people in the diocese's 65 parishes work as day laborers on large farms in the region. Only about one month remains until the end of the harvest season, and people usually count on their savings to see them through the winter, Morales said.

"Now they are going to have to use their money to rebuild their houses or rent," he said. "They are going to spend everything."

Although the government has pledged reconstruction assistance, "We still don 't know what benefits the government will provide," he said. "A lot of people will probably end up with nothing."

In cities and towns throughout the hard-hit Maule and Bio-Bio regions south of Santiago, the Chilean capital, people lost their livelihoods to the earthquake.

In neighborhoods where homes were not badly damaged, people slowly began reopening shops in their homes, said Sister Margaret O'Rourke, a California-born Sister of St. Joseph of Carondelet who lives in a poor area on the outskirts of Talca, a town of about 80,000 people.

But in the older city center, houses, shops, offices and churches made of adobe were destroyed.

"A lot of people worked in small businesses that have collapsed," Sister Margaret said. While some will probably reopen eventually, others may not. Meanwhile, their employees are out of work.

The earthquake has created some jobs, however. Unemployed men in Sister Margaret's neighborhood are finding work rebuilding and repairing houses, she said.

Along the central Chilean coast, a series of huge waves damaged or destroyed hundreds of boats, leaving small fishermen with no way to earn a living, said Gabriela Gutierrez, head of the social pastoral and Caritas office in Concepcion, the largest city near the earthquake's epicenter.

Waves swept through 10 fishing villages in the Bio-Bio region, damaging 28 large fishing boats and 400 small ones, 50 of which were destroyed, according to government authorities. They estimated that 15,000 fishermen lost boats and other equipment, such as nets, motors and diving gear.

Many other people also lost the tools of their trade, Gutierrez said. Cars used as taxis were destroyed or swept out to sea, and home workshops collapsed.

Despite the devastation, people are getting over the initial shock, beginning to clear rubble and planning to rebuild, Gutierrez said. Stores and businesses were reopening and electricity and water service were being restored. Authorities reduced the hours of the curfew that was imposed to stop looting.

"It looks like the city has been reborn," Gutierrez said. "People are starting to look ahead."

Many schools in Santiago opened on March 8. In the disaster area, officials expected classes to resume in late March or early April. Undamaged schools may extend their hours to accommodate students whose classrooms were damaged or destroyed.

Many people are still living in tents outside their homes, out of fear of the constant aftershocks shaking the region or because the houses are unsafe.

In Concepcion, where relatively new high-rise apartment buildings were damaged, many people say they "do not want to live up high," Gutierrez said, and there is fear that rental prices of single-family homes will skyrocket.

Some long-term effects of the earthquake will only become clear over time, Sister Margaret said.

"We're going to need psychological help" to help people deal with stress and the exhaustion that comes with disrupted sleep. Several Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet trained in trauma counseling will join Sister Margaret and her colleague, Sister Eileen Smits, in May, she said.

Right now, she said, "Most people need to talk. It's healthy, but it's also tiring. Some are very painful stories. Others are small miracles."

Copyright © 2010 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops