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八月中秘魯大地震新聞
Quake death toll rises as Peru declares emergency
More than 500 confirmed dead as hope fades for survivors
Associated Press in Pisco
SCMP, Aug 18, 2007
Peruvians pulled hundreds of dead people from the rubble of homes, and bodies piled up on street corners after a huge earthquake hit the country's coast on Wednesday.
The fire department said the death toll from this week's magnitude-8 quake that devastated the southern coast had risen to 510, and rescuers were still digging through rubble from collapsed homes.
In the port city of Pisco, searchers at San Clemente church pulled bodies out all day and placed at least 60 corpses in the plaza.
Doctors struggled to help more than 1,500 injured, including hundreds who waited on cots in the open air fearing aftershocks would send buildings crashing down.
Destruction from the earthquake was concentrated in Peru's southern desert, the oasis city of Ica, and nearby Pisco, about 200km southeast of the capital, Lima.
Hundreds had gathered in the San Clemente church on Wednesday, the day Roman Catholics celebrate the Virgin Mary's rise into heaven, for a special Mass.
The church's ceiling broke apart and the shaking lasted about two minutes, burying 200 people, the mayor said.
Only two stone columns and the church's dome were left, rising from a pile of stone, bricks, wood and dust.
Rescuers laid out the dead beneath bloodstained sheets in the city's plaza.
Civil defence workers then zipped them into body bags.
But relatives searching for the missing unzipped the bags, crying hysterically each time they recognised a face.
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?"
Pisco's mayor, Juan Mendoza, said: "The dead are scattered by the dozen on the streets.
"We don't have lights, water and communications.
"Most houses have fallen. Churches, stores, hotels - everything is destroyed."
Health Minister Carlos Vallejos said finding more survivors now seemed increasingly unlikely.
Felipe Gutierrez, 82, sat in his pyjamas in front of what was his Pisco home.
The earthquake reduced it to rubble and he, his 74-year-old wife, their two children and three grandchildren stared at the ruins, a tangle of building materials and belongings.
"Yesterday we slept on a mattress, and now we'll have to set up a tent because we have nowhere to live," he said.
Peru's fire department reported that the death toll had risen to 510, up from the previous figure of 450.
The earthquake's magnitude was increased from 7.9 to 8 by the US Geological Survey.
At least 14 aftershocks of magnitude 5 or greater caused further anxiety, although 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 had collapsed, and declared a state of emergency.
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 have been very generous," Mr Garcia said from Pisco.
The help provided so far includes cash from the US, United Nations, Red Cross and European Union as well as tents, water, medicine and other supplies.
Scientists said the earthquake was a megathrust, which is similar to the catastrophic Indian Ocean tremor in 2004 that caused the December tsunami.
"Megathrusts produce the largest earthquakes on the planet," US geophysicist Paul Earle said.