CONCEPCIÓN, Chile—Reinsurers are bracing for claims from the devastating earthquake in Chile that killed hundreds and caused widespread property damage.

Global reinsurers are expected to bear the largest portion of insured losses from the magnitude 8.8 quake for which catastrophe modeling companies have estimated insured losses ranging from $2 billion to $8 billion.

Initial death tolls were reported as high as 805, but a Chilean official last week said in a published report that the death toll was much lower, at 279.

The Feb. 27 quake off the coast of Chile caused extensive property damage, particularly in Concepción and Santiago. Economic damage is expected to range from $15 billion to $30 billion, according to Oakland, Calif.-based catastrophe modeling company EQECAT Inc.

Chile's property insurance market of domestic and foreign insurers has a history of sending much of the earthquake coverage they write to the global reinsurance market, sources say.

“Domestic and international companies will be affected,” said Imelda Powers, a Philadelphia-based manager of Towers Watson & Co.'s catastrophe modeling group and a senior consultant in its reinsurance brokerage. More than half of the companies operating in the Chilean property market are foreign companies, she said.

As much as 75% of earthquake cover written in Chile likely was ceded to reinsurers, according to Axco Insurance Information Services Ltd. in London.

Chile's local market largely is driven by foreign insurers and reinsurers, Axco said in a recent report. In 2007, the latest year figures are available, insurers ceded 74.6% of the earthquake risk to the reinsurance market, according to the report. That includes intragroup reinsurance, whereby insurers cede coverage to related companies.

With loss estimates not yet complete, uncertainty remains as to the size of claims that will hit reinsurers.

“There will be an impact on global reinsurers, but it is far too soon to tell how large that impact might be,” said Robert P. Hartwig, president of the Insurance Information Institute in New York. “Given that the cat modeling firms have put the loss at somewhere between $2 billion and $8 billion—an enormous range—the potential impact on global reinsurers is highly uncertain at this point,” he said in an e-mail.

“There has not been enough time to conduct thorough inspections at this point,” Mr. Hartwig said of damage, such as structural problems, that is discovered later.

As of Friday, only London-based RSA Insurance Group P.L.C. had estimated its potential exposure to the quake. Those losses could reach £30 million ($45.7 million) net of reinsurance for RSA, which writes general insurance through subsidiary Royal & Sun Alliance Seguros Chile.

“It's still too early. In an event like this, people are sorting out their lives and they will have to ascertain damages later,” said a spokesman for Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty A.G. in Munich.

Neither Munich Reinsurance Co. nor Swiss Reinsurance Co. had loss figures available as of late last week.

The area most severely affected by the quake contains residential and commercial properties with an insurable value of about $275 billion, according to Boston-based modeling company AIR Worldwide Corp. Of this, about 70% is in the Santiago area and about 5% is in Concepción.

However, only about 10% of residential policyholders and about 60% of commercial policyholders buy earthquake insurance, according to AIR.

Chile's pulp and wine industries were among those hit hard by the quake.

Celulosa Arauco temporarily shut its operation and was assessing damages. The large Santiago pulp producer said it has insurance for damage and business interruption losses.

Chile's wineries lost 125 million liters (33 million gallons) of wine, including bulk, bottled and aging wine, said winemakers' association Vinos de Chile A.G. The loss amounts to around $250 million.

“The damage to infrastructure varies among the different wineries and has not, as yet, been fully measured,” René Merino, the association's president said in a statement last week. The group did not immediately respond to questions about its insurance coverage.

While earthquake coverage already is pricey in Chile because of its high frequency, it is unlikely to become significantly more expensive even after major earthquakes that hit Haiti and Taiwan this year, Mr. Hartwig said.

“The Chile quake is not a market-changing event,” he said in the e-mail. “The Haiti quake produced very little in the way of insurance and reinsurance losses...and therefore had no impact on global reinsurance capacity or pricing.” Insured losses in Taiwan had not been estimated as of late last week, he noted.

EQECAT said Friday that it expects total economic damages from the Taiwan quake to be less than $1 billion, including losses from secondary fires and landslides, with insured losses a “small fraction” of that amount.

Ms. Powers said this is the second major earthquake Chile has experienced since a magnitude 9.5 quake—the strongest recorded worldwide—hit in 1960. “That's a very high frequency. So you would expect that it is extremely expensive to buy earthquake insurance,” he said.