Seventeen Ottawa residents who were on a tropical vacation to Buenos Aires have found themselves stranded in the capital city of Chile, after a massive earthquake devastated parts of the nation.

Their passports are buried in the rubble of the international airport and their cruise ship has sailed without them. Now, the Canadian Embassy is working on getting them home.

Meanwhile, Ottawa residents who have family in Chile are desperately trying to contact family members who live in what is now a disaster zone.

With phone lines down, phone calls are flooding the Chilean embassy in Ottawa, where officials are now encouraging residents to use the Internet, including social networking websites such as Facebook and Twitter, to contact loved ones in the earthquake zone.

"We'd like to tell them to contact their relatives through Facebook or Skype because it's the easiest way to know about some relative because we don't have some telephone contact with Chile," Javier Becker, of the Chilean embassy, told CTV Ottawa.

Still, residents in the capital are anxiously seeking signs their families are safe, dialing their phone numbers over and over again.

"I'm very worried about my mother. She is 85 right now who is not in very good shape," said Hugo Pareja, owner of Vina del Mar, Ottawa's only Chilean restaurant.

"All of my brothers and sisters are down there. It's only me outside the country. So I have four brothers and four sisters right now, all my family is there."

One of Pareja's sisters lives just north of the epicentre in Santiago, Chile's capital city. So far, he hasn't been able to contact her.

"No answer, just busy, busy, busy," he said.

With 40,000 Chileans living in Canada, about 300 live in the capital. Another 1,100 Canadians are registered as visitors to Chile.

A massive 8.8-magnitude earthquake struck the nation early Saturday morning, killing more than 700 people and damaging or destroying a half-million homes across the country.

Although the Chilean government hasn't asked for international assistance, the UN is rushing aid and supplies to the country. In Canada, the Red Cross is also receiving donations from people eager to help.

"We have regional representatives in Santiago supporting the Chilean Red Cross and we also have four other disaster management specialists on standby in Panama ready to deploy should the situation warrant it," said Jean-Pierre Taschereau, spokesperson for the Canadian Red Cross.

With a report from CTV Ottawa's Joanne Schnurr