Peru:The names of the dead were freshly painted in black on headstones in this southern port city razed by a powerful earthquake, as at least two strong aftershocks yesterday rattled the region.
Survivors of Wednesday's 8.0-magnitude quake lined up under a beating sun in Pisco's central plaza to receive bottled water unloaded from trucks by soldiers.
Brig Maj Jorge Vera, chief of the rescue operation, said 85 per cent of downtown Pisco was destroyed in the quake, which killed at least 510 people and sent a church's soaring ceiling tumbling down on hundreds of worshippers. The centre of the city was choked with traffic, including relief vehicles.
"The biggest problem is that Pisco practically no longer exists. Everything is destroyed. It has practically been razed," Julio Franco, chief of operations in Pisco for a Spain-based NGO called Firefighters without Borders, told Cadena Ser radio.
The relief effort showed signs of organisation by mid-morning, with the military clearing rubble, police identifying corpses and civil defence teams ferrying food. Housing ministry officials started to assess who will need new homes.
"Nobody is going to die of hunger or thirst," Peru president Alan Garcia said following complaints that aid was not arriving fast enough for thousands who lost loved ones, homes and belongings in Wednesday's temblor.
At least two aftershocks, including a 5.9-magnitude quake, rattled the area yesterday.
"In 10 days, we'll have a situation approaching normality," said Mr Garcia, though he acknowledged that rebuilding the hard-hit southern coastal region would take far longer.
On Thursday, distraught relatives wept as they searched grim rows of body bags for loved ones killed when the church ceiling came down.
Peru's fire department said late on Thursday the death toll from the quake had risen to 510, and rescuers were still digging through rubble from collapsed adobe homes in cities and hamlets.
Searchers at Pisco's San Clemente church pulled out at least 60 bodies by late Thursday. More than 1,500 were injured in the quake-hit region.
One man shouted at the bodies of his wife and two small daughters as they were pulled from the rubble: "Why did you go? Why?" As dusk fell, health minister Carlos Vallejos said finding survivors seemed increasingly unlikely.
Mr Garcia flew by helicopter to Ica, a city of 120,000 where a quarter of the buildings collapsed, and declared a state of emergency.
Government doctors called off their national strike for higher pay to handle the emergency.
International help included cash from the United States, European Union, United Nations and Red Cross, as well as tents, water, medicine and other supplies. The US navy hospital ship Comfort, equipped with a staff of 800 and 12 operating rooms, is in Ecuador and could quickly sail to Peru if asked, US officials said.
Electricity, water and phone service were down in much of southern Peru. Rescue convoys were slowed by giant cracks and fallen power lines on the Panamerican Highway.
Scientists said the quake was a "megathrust" - a type of earthquake similar to the catastrophic Indian Ocean temblor in 2004 that generated tsunami waves. "Megathrusts produce the largest earthquakes on the planet," USGS geophysicist Paul Earle said.
- (AP)