PISCO, Peru [—] The death toll rose to 510 on Thursday following 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 more than 1,500 injured, including hundreds who waited on cots in the open air, fearing more aftershocks would send the structures crashing down.
Destruction was centered in Peru’s southern desert, at the oasis city of Ica and the nearby port of Pisco, about 125 miles southeast of the capital, Lima.
The United Nations said the death toll was expected to rise.
“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 magnitude-8 earthquake, which devastated cities and hamlets of adobe and brick across Peru’s southern desert.
Hundreds had gathered inside San Clemente church 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. On 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. The tremors caused renewed anxiety, though there were no reports of additional damage or injuries.
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.
“There has been a good international response even without Peru asking for it, and they’ve been very generous,” Garcia said during a stop in Pisco, where so many buildings fell that streets were covered with small mountains of adobe bricks and broken furniture.
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