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Quake buries 200 alive
16/08/2007 22:28 - (SA)
Ica - Rescuers struggled across a shattered countryside on Thursday to reach victims of a magnitude-8 earthquake that killed at least 450 people. About 1 500 people were reported injured.
The centre of the destruction was in Peru's southern desert, in the oasis city of Ica and the nearby port of Pisco southeast of the capital, Lima.
Pisco's mayor said at least 200 people were buried in the rubble of a church where they had been attending a service.
"The dead are scattered by the dozens on the streets," Mayor Juan Mendoza told Lima radio station CPN.
'15 major aftershocks followed'
"We don't have lights, water, communications. Most houses have fallen. Churches, stores, hotels - everything is destroyed," the mayor said, sobbing.
In Ica, a city of 120 000 near the epicentre, a fourth of the buildings collapsed, at least 57 bodies were brought to the morgue and injured parents and children crowded into a hospital where they waited for attention on cots.
Several Ica churches, also were damaged, including the historic Senor de Luren church. Cable news station Canal N said 17 people were killed in one of them.
The earthquake's magnitude was raised from 7.9 to 8 on Thursday by the US Geological Survey. At least 15 major aftershocks followed, some as strong as magnitude-6.3.
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 paralysed by giant cracks and fallen powerlines on the Panamerican Highway south of Lima.
Large boulders also blocked Peru's Central Highway to the Andes mountains. Rescue flights from Colombia and Panama were being prepared, but it wasn't immediately clear when they could arrive.
'Our services are saturated'
In Chincha, a small town 30km north of Pisco, an AP 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," Dr Huber Malma said as he single-handedly attended to dozens of people.
Chincha looked as if it had been bombed. Large areas were completely levelled; 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," Maria Cortez said, staring vacantly at the half of her house that was still standing.
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