Rescuers in Ecuador yesterday clawed through collapsed buildings, as they scrambled to find survivors of a powerful earthquake that killed at least 272 people, injured thousands and caused widespread coastal destruction.
Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa said the death toll would “certainly” rise following the magnitude 7.8 quake that struck the small, oil-producing South American nation late on Saturday.
The quake, the most powerful to strike Ecuador in decades, shattered hotels and homes along its Pacific coast popular with tourists and reduced several towns to rubble.
Photo: AFP
More than 2,000 people were injured as structures tumbled during the quake or its dozens of aftershocks.
The capital, Quito, farther inland, escaped with cracked walls and power outages, and the nation’s strategic oil facilities appeared unscathed, officials said.
Ecuador’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Guillaume Long said on Twitter that experienced rescuers were arriving from Switzerland, Spain and Latin American nations, including Mexico and Peru.
In Portoviejo, a city 15km from the coast, the temblor knocked down walls in a prison, allowing 100 inmates to escape.
Some were recaptured or returned later, but police were hunting for the others, Ecuadorean Minister of Justice Ledy Zuniga tweeted.
Elsewhere in hard-hit Portoviejo, the stench of decaying bodies began to fill the tropical air as rescuers raced to find survivors.
Officials have declared a state of emergency in the worst-hit provinces and a national state of “exception,” both of which suspend certain civil rights and liberties to allow security forces and officials to react faster.
Correa on Sunday visited the disaster zone after cutting short an official trip to the Vatican.
He said the latest death toll “will certainly rise and probably in a considerable way” in the hours ahead.
Among the worst-hit towns in the quake was Pedernales, where Pedernales Mayor Gabriel Alcivar estimated there were up to 400 more dead yet to be confirmed, many buried under the rubble of collapsed hotels.
Soldiers patrolled the beach town, while the Red Cross and the army opened a field hospital and a makeshift morgue at a local stadium.
Foreigners killed by the quake include two Canadians and five Colombians, officials said.
Ecuador’s Geophysical Office reported “considerable” structural damage as far away as Guayaquil, Ecuador’s biggest city with more than 2 million people, which is 350km away.
Although Ecuador frequently suffers seismic shudders because of its position on the Pacific Rim’s “Ring of Fire,” the quake — which lasted a full minute — was the worst in nearly 40 years.
Ecuador has been rocked by seven earthquakes of magnitude 7 or higher in the region of Saturday’s quake since 1900, the US Geological Survey said. One in March 1987 killed about 1,000 people.
David Rothery, a professor of geosciences at Britain’s Open University, said a magnitude of 7.8 meant that “the total energy involved was probably about 20 times greater” than a magnitude 7 earthquake that killed at least 42 people in southern Japan on Saturday.
He said there is no link between the two quakes.
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