THOUSANDS OF people fled the Spanish town of Lorca yesterday as engineers assessed the damage from the country’s worst earthquake in half a century.
Nine people were killed and more than 120 injured when a 5.1-magnitude quake caused buildings to collapse and masonry to fall, crushing cars and littering the streets with bricks.
Hundreds of people queued for food aid and wandered the streets wrapped in blankets yesterday. Many of the town’s 90,000 population had slept outdoors on Wednesday night, afraid to return to their homes after a series of tremors, and most were still waiting for engineers to allow them to enter homes yesterday.
Prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero said 800 military and civil guard personnel were in Lorca, while 370 army tents had been sent and a camp hospital had been set up. “We’ve activated all aid measures with maximum speed,” he said live on television, pledging to rebuild damaged water mains and roads quickly and to visit the town today.
“Today will be even longer than yesterday,” warned mayor Francisco Jodar, who vowed to get people under cover by last night and proclaimed three days of mourning. Most of the town’s population had spent Wednesday night sheltering in their cars, streets, public squares or other towns, he said. “It is very sad to see neighbours spending the night in the street. There is desperation and fear that there could be another seismological event.”
Rescue teams, military personnel and bulldozers moved into the city yesterday morning to clear away rubble, which included the remains of one three-storey building that collapsed across a city street. The local hospital, damaged by the quake, was evacuated and its patients transferred.
At least two of the dead were killed by falling masonry crashing to the ground from an apartment building in one of the town’s poorer neighbourhoods.
“Most of the structures themselves are going to hold, but everything inside – walls, windows, doors, everything else – has been affected,” said Rafael Such, a surveyor for an insurance company, sifting through rubble yesterday.
Earthquakes causing extensive damage and fatalities are rare in Spain, although the south of the country has extensive faultlines.
In 1969 a 7.8 magnitude earthquake killed 19 people in the town of Huelva, according to Spain’s National Geographic Institute.
Wednesday’s earthquake was revised down by the US Geological Survey from an initial estimate of magnitude 5.3, but was relatively close to the surface at a depth of just one kilometre.
Mr Zapatero’s Socialist party and the centre-right opposition Popular Party suspended campaign rallies throughout Spain for the May 22nd regional and local elections for a day yesterday out of respect for the earthquake victims.
Opposition leader Mariano Rajoy visited Lorca yesterday, as did deputy prime minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba and defence minister Carme Chacon.