Anxious Peru quake survivors loot market By FRANK BAJAK, Associated Press Writer

Anxious Peru quake survivors loot market By FRANK BAJAK, Associated Press Writer
32 minutes ago



PISCO, Peru - Hungry earthquake survivors ransacked a public market Friday, while other mobs looted a refrigerated trailer and blocked aid trucks, prompting Peru's president to appeal for calm. Aid finally arrived to the disaster zone after about 36 hours without much help.

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Few buildings still stood in the fishing city of Pisco Friday in the wake of a magnitude-8 earthquake that killed 510 people. Many of the structures not reduced to rubble were rickety deathtraps waiting to fall.

President Alan Garcia, on the scene for the second straight day, vowed that no one would die of hunger or thirst.

"I understand your desperation, your anxiety," he said. "There is no reason to fall into exaggerated desperation."

Garcia predicted "a situation approaching normality" in 10 days, but acknowledged that reconstruction would take far longer.

Two sunrises after the earthquake all but leveled this city of 90,000 people on Peru's desert southern coast, workers continued to pull bodies from rubble, the region lacked water and electricity, and officials began to worry about the outbreak of disease.

The death count stood at 510, according to Peru's fire department, and hopes of finding more survivors diminished. At least 1,500 people suffered injuries and Garcia said 80,000 people had lost loved ones, homes or both.

Brig. Maj. Jorge Vera, chief of the rescue operation, said 85 percent of Pisco's downtown was rubble.

The relief effort was finally getting organized. Police identified bodies and civil defense teams ferried in food. Housing officials assessed the need for new homes, and in several towns long lines formed under an intense sun to collect water from soldiers.

In the capital of Lima, Peruvians donated tons of supplies as food, water, tents and blankets began arriving in the quake zone.

Peruvian soldiers also began distributing aluminum caskets, allowing the first funerals. In Pisco's cemetery, lined with collapsed tombs and tumbled crosses, a man painted the names of the dead on headstones — some 200 were lined up. Grieving relatives lowered coffins into shallow graves.

"My dear child, Gloria!" wailed Julia Siguis, her hands spread over two small coffins holding her cousin and niece. "Who am I going to call now? Who am I going to call?"

All day, people with no way to refrigerate corpses rushed coffins through the cemetery gate, which leaned dangerously until a bulldozer came to knock it down.

Doctors at Pisco's hospital were treating 169 people but failed to save 30 others. Medical services were moved to a basketball court and the damaged hospital building was being used as a morgue, said Dr. Jose Renteros, the physician in charge. Many injured had been flown to Lima.

More aftershocks jolted the region, frightening survivors, who fell to their knees in prayer, but doing little damage. At least 18 tremors of magnitude-5 or greater had struck since the initial quake, which people said pumped the ground in violent jabs Wednesday evening like the pistons of a car engine.

Survivors told tales of lost loved ones — a girl selling sweets outside a bank, a young woman studying dance, crushed when buildings made of unreinforced adobe and brick collapsed during the earth's interminable two minutes of heaving.

About 15 guests and workers couldn't get out as the five-story Embassy Hotel accordioned onto its ground floor. A billiard hall buried as many as 20 people.

Manuel Medina said he had dug the body of his 12-year-old nephew, Miguel Blondet Soto, and a dozen other children from their English classroom at the San Tomas school. "Those who were in front managed to get out, but those in the back died," he said.

Soaring church ceilings tumbled onto the faithful in towns all around this gritty port city, covering pews in tons of stone, timbers and dust.

"People were running out the front door screaming," said Renzo Hernandez, who watched from the other side of Pisco's main plaza as the San Clemente church disintegrated.

The survivors, bloodied and covered in dust, hugged one another in terror and relief, he said. "It felt like the end of the world."

Fishing boats lay marooned in city streets in nearby San Andres, and an oceanside neighborhood of Pisco looked like New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, with piles of rubble poking from water that rushed in during the tremor.

Searchers still sought bodies and survivors in the rubble of San Clemente church, where hundreds had gathered Wednesday for a funeral Mass when the quake struck. About 50 bodies had been removed, said Jorge Molina, the search team leader. "We've heard sounds. There are two places where we're hearing taps, very faint taps," he said.

Molina held out hope for finding more people alive — a man was pulled from the church wreckage Thursday.

But searchers were having little luck as they went block to block in Pisco, shouting into piles of brick and mortar: "We're firefighters! If you can hear us, shout or strike something!"

The U.S. government released $150,000 in cash to pay for emergency supplies and dispatched medical teams — one of which was already on the ground. It also sent two mobile clinics and loaned two helicopters to Peruvian authorities.

But the U.S. Navy hospital ship Comfort, now docked in Ecuador, won't make the three-day trip to Pisco because both governments decided it wasn't needed. The Comfort carries 800 medical personnel, but Peru needs supplies more than doctors, U.S. Embassy spokesman Dan Martinez said.

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Associated Press writers Jeanneth Valdivieso in Pisco and Monte Hayes in Lima contributed to this report.