Rescuers race to find Peru quake survivors
Sunday, 19 August 2007
PISCO, Peru, Aug 18 (AFP): Rescuers in Peru early Saturday sifted through rubble in search for victims of an earthquake that killed 500 people as President Alan Garcia surveyed the wreckage of this Peruvian town.
Rescue teams including visiting Spanish specialists with sniffer dogs worked in the rubble and desperate survivors looted food trucks, as tempers frayed over the slow arrival of emergency aid two days after the massive quake.
President Alan Garcia warned that the death toll given by firefighters of at least 500 could rise as unknown numbers of bodies remain trapped beneath the rubble of collapsed buildings following Wednesday's magnitude 8.0 earthquake, the most severe to hit the region in decades.
Sure enough, three dead bodies were carried out of San Clemente, the town's main church, and laid out on the town square for their families to identify, an AFP reporter at the scene reported. One woman burst into tears as she recognised a dead relative.
Rattled by aftershocks and cut off from most of the world, survivors looted trucks carrying food and water and a crowd of 2,000 gathered in the town square of Chincha, screaming at officials who were unable to tell them when help would begin to trickle in.
Garcia visited the coastal town of Pisco-the area hardest hit by the quake-and said he was there when a body was recovered from the church, which had collapsed as hundreds of mourners attended a funeral service.
"According to rescuers and firefighters, there are still dozens of bodies below" the rubble, he said.
Lacking official figures, news media estimate the number of people affected by the quake at anywhere from 60,000 and 200,000 with many tens of thousands believed to have lost their homes.
Even though the days remain warm, temperatures in the southern hemisphere winter are now dropping to 10 degrees Celsius (50 Fahrenheit) at night, and countless poor residents lost their adobe hut homes which crumbled in the quake.
"The nights are horribly cold, and it also rains," Victor Ortega, 65, told AFP. "It is worse than having been bombed in a war."
Outside Pisco, a mob blocked the highway close to an air force base where the humanitarian aid effort is being centralized.
Local radio reported that truck drivers did not resist when the residents swarmed their vehicles. Neither did police from a nearby station intervene.
Rescue teams including visiting Spanish specialists with sniffer dogs worked in the rubble and desperate survivors looted food trucks, as tempers frayed over the slow arrival of emergency aid two days after the massive quake.
President Alan Garcia warned that the death toll given by firefighters of at least 500 could rise as unknown numbers of bodies remain trapped beneath the rubble of collapsed buildings following Wednesday's magnitude 8.0 earthquake, the most severe to hit the region in decades.
Sure enough, three dead bodies were carried out of San Clemente, the town's main church, and laid out on the town square for their families to identify, an AFP reporter at the scene reported. One woman burst into tears as she recognised a dead relative.
Rattled by aftershocks and cut off from most of the world, survivors looted trucks carrying food and water and a crowd of 2,000 gathered in the town square of Chincha, screaming at officials who were unable to tell them when help would begin to trickle in.
Garcia visited the coastal town of Pisco-the area hardest hit by the quake-and said he was there when a body was recovered from the church, which had collapsed as hundreds of mourners attended a funeral service.
"According to rescuers and firefighters, there are still dozens of bodies below" the rubble, he said.
Lacking official figures, news media estimate the number of people affected by the quake at anywhere from 60,000 and 200,000 with many tens of thousands believed to have lost their homes.
Even though the days remain warm, temperatures in the southern hemisphere winter are now dropping to 10 degrees Celsius (50 Fahrenheit) at night, and countless poor residents lost their adobe hut homes which crumbled in the quake.
"The nights are horribly cold, and it also rains," Victor Ortega, 65, told AFP. "It is worse than having been bombed in a war."
Outside Pisco, a mob blocked the highway close to an air force base where the humanitarian aid effort is being centralized.
Local radio reported that truck drivers did not resist when the residents swarmed their vehicles. Neither did police from a nearby station intervene.