Hundreds dead in Peru earthquake

Hundreds dead in Peru earthquake
Copyright by The Associated Press
Published: August 16, 2007


LIMA: Rescuers struggled across a shattered countryside Thursday to reach victims of a powerful earthquake that killed at least 450 people. More than 1,500 people were reported injured and the Red Cross said the toll was expected to rise.

The center of the destruction was in the southern desert of Peru, in the oasis city of Ica and the nearby port of Pisco, about 200 kilometers, or 125 miles, southeast of Lima. The mayor of Pisco, Juan Mendoza Uribe, said at least 200 people had been buried in the rubble of a church where they were attending a service.

The quake hit Wednesday evening and its magnitude was reported at 8.0 by the United States Geological Survey.

Ica was blacked out, as were smaller towns along the coast south of Lima. Rescue workers reported difficulty getting to Ica because of cracks in the highway and downed power lines.

Uribe said 70 percent of Pisco, a city of about 60,000 people, had been leveled by the quake. "So much effort, and our city is destroyed," he said on radio RPP in Lima.

The city remained without electricity Thursday morning. Hundreds of families were sleeping on the streets, according to the official Andina news agency, and 25 bodies were placed in front of municipal buildings after the morgue had filled to capacity.

Office workers in Lima fled tall buildings that shook in two waves that lasted around 20 seconds each, Reuters reported. Power lines were broken.

"I was in class on the fifth floor, and suddenly everything started to shake and glass began falling," said Carolina Montero, 37, a banking administrator and finance student who lives in Callao, a coastal city near Lima.

An American living in Peru, Electra Anderson, told CNN by telephone from her apartment that it seemed when the quake began that many people had no idea what was happening, and ran into the streets screaming and crying.

"We're used to earthquakes," Anderson, who is from California, said. "But it just didn't stop; it kept going and going, and it kept getting stronger and stronger." She said she had counted about 70 aftershocks. "It's just been nonstop."

The U.S. Geological Survey said the earthquake struck about 145 kilometers southeast of Lima. Four strong aftershocks ranging in magnitude from 5.4 to 5.9 followed.

A tsunami warning was issued for coastal areas of Peru, Chile, Ecuador and Colombia, and a small tsunami was detected, but it posed no threat and the warning was later lifted, news services reported.

The scope of the destruction became more evident as the frigid dawn broke and thick stone and masonry walls were seen collapsed in piles around the region. The quake knocked out telephone and mobile phone service between the capital and the disaster zone. Electricity also was cut, with power lines drooping dangerously into the streets.

The government rushed police, soldiers, doctors and aid to the area, but traffic was paralyzed by giant cracks and fallen power lines on the Pan-American Highway south of Lima. Large boulders also blocked the main highway to the Andes mountains. Rescue flights from Colombia and Panama were being prepared, but it was not immediately clear when they could arrive.

In Chincha, a small town 30 kilometers north of Pisco, an Associated Press Television News cameraman counted 30 bodies under bloody sheets in a patio of the badly damaged hospital. About 200 people were waiting to be treated in walkways and gardens, kept outside for fear that aftershocks could topple the cracked walls.

"Our services are saturated and half of the hospital has collapsed," Huber Malma, a doctor, said as he attended to dozens of people.

Chincha looked as if it had been bombed. Large areas were completely leveled; dozens of homes made with adobe bricks had collapsed. Townspeople picked through the rubble of their homes, wrapped in sheets that made them look like ghosts in the early dawn.

"We're all frightened to return to our houses," María Cortez said, staring vacantly at the half of her house that was still standing.

The Peruvian Red Cross arrived in Ica and Pisco more than seven hours after the initial quake, about three times as long as it would normally have taken because of road damage, a Red Cross official, Giorgio Ferrario, said. Offers of money and aid were flowing in from the United Nations, Spain and several Latin American countries.

In Lima, about 150 kilometers from the epicenter, only one death was recorded, and some homes collapsed. But the furious two minutes of shaking prompted thousands of people to flee into the streets and sleep in public parks.

Antony Falconi, 27, was desperately trying to get public transportation home as hundreds of people milled on the streets flagging down buses in the dark.

"Who isn't going to be frightened?" Falconi said. "The earth moved differently this time. It made waves and the earth was like jelly."

The last time an earthquake of magnitude 7.0 or larger struck Peru was in September 2005, when a 7.5 magnitude quake rocked the northern jungle, killing four people. In 2001, a 7.9-magnitude quake struck near the southern Andean city of Arequipa, killing 71 people.