Pisco, Peru – The death toll rose to 510 Thursday in the magnitude-8 earthquake that devastated cities of adobe and brick in Peru’s southern desert. Survivors wearing blankets walked like ghosts through the ruins.
Dust-covered dead were pulled out and laid in rows in the streets, or beneath bloodstained sheets at damaged hospitals and morgues.
Doctors struggled to help the more than 1,500 injured, including hundreds who waited on cots in the open air, fearing more aftershocks would send structures crashing down.
Destruction was centered in Peru’s southern desert, at the oasis city of Ica and in the nearby port of Pisco, about 125 miles southeast of the capital, Lima.
The deputy chief of Peru’s fire department, Roberto Ognio, presented a report saying the death toll from the quake had risen to 510. Earlier Thursday, the United Nations said the official toll of 450 was expected to rise. Ognio did not say where the additional 60 deaths had occurred.
“It is quite likely that the numbers will continue to go up since the destruction of the houses in this area is quite total,” said U.N. Assistant Secretary-General Margareta Wahlstrom.
The San Clemente church in the main plaza of the gritty fishing port of Pisco was perhaps the single deadliest spot in the earthquake.
Hundreds had gathered inside for a service when the soaring ceiling began to break apart. Worshipers were caught in their pews.
The shaking lasted for an agonizing two minutes, burying at least 200 people, according to the town’s mayor. Thursday, only two stone columns rose from a giant pile of stone, bricks, wood and dust.
Rescuers pulled out bodies all day and lined them up on the plaza – at least 60 by late afternoon. Civil defense workers then arrived and zipped them into body bags. But relatives searching desperately for the missing opened the zippers, crying hysterically each time they recognized a familiar face.
Few in the traumatized crowds would talk with journalists. 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?”
“The dead are scattered by the dozens on the streets,” Pisco Mayor Juan Mendoza told Lima radio station CPN, sobbing. “We don’t have lights, water, communications. Most houses have fallen. Churches, stores, hotels – everything is destroyed.”
The earthquake’s magnitude was raised from 7.9 to 8 on Thursday by the U.S. Geological Survey. At least 14 aftershocks of magnitude 5 or greater followed.
President Alan Garcia flew by helicopter to Ica, a city of 120,000 where a quarter of the buildings collapsed, and declared a state of emergency.
He said flights were reaching Ica to take in aid and take out the injured. Government doctors called off their national strike for higher pay to handle the emergency.
International help includes cash from the United States, United Nations, Red Cross and European Union as well as tents, water, medicine and other supplies. The U.S. 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, U.S. officials said.
In Washington, President Bush offered condolences. One American died in the quake, according to the State Department.
Electricity, water and phone service were down in much of southern Peru. The government rushed police, soldiers and doctors to the area, but traffic was paralyzed by giant cracks and fallen power lines on the Panamerican Highway. Large boulders also blocked Peru’s Central Highway to the Andes Mountains.
In Chincha, a small town near Pisco only 25 miles from the quake’s epicenter, an AP Television News cameraman counted 30 bodies in a hospital patio. Hundreds of injured lay side-by- side on cots on hospital walkways and in 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 patients.
The quake toppled a wall in Chincha’s prison, allowing at least 600 prisoners to flee. Only 29 had been recaptured, prisons official Manuel Aguilar said.
In Lima, 95 miles from the epicenter, one death was recorded. But the furious two minutes of shaking prompted thousands to flee into the streets and sleep in public parks.
“The earth moved differently this time. It made waves and the earth was like jelly,” said Antony Falconi, 27, trying to find a bus to take him home.
Scientists said the quake was a “megathrust” – a type similar to the catastrophic Indian Ocean temblor in 2004 that generated deadly tsunami waves.
Wednesday’s quake caused a tsunami as well, but scientists expected surges of no more than 1.6 feet in faraway Japan.
In general, magnitude-8 quakes are capable of causing tremendous damage. Quakes of magnitude 2.5 to 3 are the smallest generally felt.
Peru’s largest earthquakes
Bruce Presgrave of the National Earthquake Information Center said Wednesday’s quake was the third-biggest of the year worldwide. Only earthquakes of 8.1 magnitude off the coasts of Russia and Australia were bigger. It is also one of Peru’s largest:
1970: 7.7 magnitude, 70,000 killed – many in Huaraz, which was buried by a mudslide – and 600,000 homes destroyed
2001: 8.4 magnitude, centered in Arequipa, 138 killed, 25,000 homes destroyed
1868: 9 magnitude, thousands killed by the earthquake and ensuing tsunami
Source: Denver Post news services
