PERU:Peruvian rescue services were combing through rubble last night for survivors of a powerful earthquake that killed at least 450 people and injured more than 1,500. Rory Carrollreports.
Several villages and towns south of the capital Lima were in ruins, with dozens of bodies scattered on the streets and hundreds more feared to be lying beneath collapsed buildings.
The 8.0-magnitude quake struck at 6.40pm local time on Wednesday and lasted several minutes. Power blackouts, cracked motorways and boulders that tumbled from mountains blocked the Pan-American highway and delayed emergency crews reaching the worst-hit areas.
At least 200 people in the town of Pisco were reported trapped under a church which caved in during a religious service. "So much effort and our city is destroyed," the town's mayor, Mendoza Uribe, told local radio. About 70 per cent of the port city of 60,000 people had been levelled, he said, weeping.
"We don't have lights, water, communications. Most houses have fallen, churches, stores, hotels, everything is destroyed."
Witnesses from the nearby town of Chincha said there were at least 30 bodies at the badly damaged hospital. With the weather being cold, many of the homeless appealed for blankets.
Damage to the city and province of Ica was "dramatic", according to the deputy health minister, José Calderón.
The government declared a state of emergency in the affected areas, appealed for blood donations and mobilised thousands of police, soldiers and medical staff. It promised an "air bridge" to shuttle the most badly injured to Lima. Hospital doctors called off a planned strike. Telephone companies appealed to people to make emergency calls only.
A quarter of Ica's buildings were said to have collapsed and several churches were badly damaged, with local media reporting that in one church, falling masonry killed 17 worshippers.
At least 57 bodies were brought to the morgue, and injured people crowded into a hospital which resembled a war zone, with blood on the floor, screaming children and overwhelmed medical staff, according to reports. Yesterday Peru's national disaster management authority estimated at least 450 were dead and 1,500 injured. The Red Cross said the toll was expected to rise.
However, the doomsday scenario did not happen: Lima, a vast metropolis of poorly built concrete building, which has suffered cataclysmic earthquakes in the past, shook violently but escaped with minor damage and one recorded death. "It made waves and the earth was like jelly," Antony Falconi (27), told the Associated Press. "Who isn't going to be frightened? The earth moved differently this time."
Another Lima resident, Maria Pilar Mena (47), said it was the strongest tremor she had ever felt. "When the quake struck, I thought it would never end."
Others described surreal scenes with power lines flaring and illuminating the night as if they were being shelled.
President Alan Garcia thanked God there had not been "a catastrophe with an immense number of victims".
Offers of international aid poured in, with Chile being one of the fastest in dispatching a Hercules aircraft with aid. Oxfam and other aid agencies were also mobilising. The pope offered prayers of condolence.
The US Geological Survey, which initially estimated the magnitude at 7.9 before raising it to 8.0, said the epicentre was beneath the Pacific coast about 90 miles southeast of Lima. Four strong aftershocks ranging from 5.4 to 5.9 followed, the organisation said.
In 1970 a 7.9-magnitude earthquake in the Andes north of Lima triggered a landslide which buried the town of Yungay, killing up to 66,000 people.