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Death Toll Climbs To 349 In El Salvador Earthquake
SAN SALVADOR (News Agencies) - Rescue workers in El Salvador were losing hope of finding survivors Sunday, as the death toll from the earthquake that rocked Central America rose to 349 and many remained missing after a landslide buried hundreds of homes.
Mayor Oscar Ortiz of New San Salvador, 12 kilometers (seven miles) west of the capital, said that 127 bodies had been recovered in the Las Colinas suburb alone, where a landslide triggered by the quake buried more than 300 houses.
But Claudia Salazar of Guatemala's fire department, which was aiding the rescue effort in Las Colinas, said "it is nearly impossible that there are more survivors, given the incredible amount of earth that has fallen on the houses, practically crushing them."
Red Cross spokesman Carlos Lopez Mendoza said at least 1,200 people were missing there and the death toll was likely to rise.
Many of the homes in Las Colinas were completely buried in earth from the section of wooded hillside that had collapsed onto them.
In a preliminary estimate, the National Emergency Committee said that in 19 other communities across El Salvador, 132 deaths had been recorded, 350 people had been injured and 1,336 had been forced to flee their homes. Other humanitarian groups put the number of wounded at 500.
At least two people were killed in Guatemala.
The strength of the quake, which struck at 11:33 am (1733 GMT) Saturday, was estimated at between 7.6 and 7.9 on the Richter scale, according to agencies based in Strasbourg, France, and the United States.
According to the U.S. National Earthquake Information Center, its epicenter lay off El Salvador's Pacific Coast, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) southwest of the city of San Miguel.
Aftershocks continued to be felt into Sunday, with the country's Geological Research Center reporting that, by 4:00 am (1000 GMT), a total of 475 aftershocks had been recorded.
Rescue workers and members of the public toiled through the night searching for survivors in the worst hit areas of El Salvador, often in darkness where the quake on Saturday had cut power lines.
Salvadoran President Francisco Flores declared a nationwide state of emergency and issued an urgent appeal for international aid, as the country's own National Emergency Committee began to organize temporary housing for those made homeless.
Flores said he had delegated to the National Association of Private Business (ANEP) the task of overseeing the distribution of food and other aid.
In La Libertad province, west of the capital, 38 people were confirmed dead by the National Emergency Committee Saturday, which gave lesser numbers for other provinces.
In the low-income northern neighborhoods of the capital San Salvador, thousands of people opted to sleep in parks and squares rather than remain inside their houses, which are often not very structurally sound.
"There have been serious and painful human losses and a lot of material damage," Flores said in a message to the nation broadcast Saturday, in which he detailed the government's response and appealed for calm.
Early Sunday, the first foreign team arrived - a group of Mexican rescue workers flown in to a military base to the east of San Salvador. Later, firefighters sent by Guatemala arrived by road from El Salvador's northern neighbor.
The Taiwanese government offered condolences and said it had dispatched a 30-member team, created after the September 1999 earthquake there.
And throughout the day on Sunday, Spain, Turkey, France, Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands, Colombia and Venezuela all pledged aid in the form of rescue teams, supplies and/or money.
National Emergency Committee director Mauricio Ferrer said a U.S. military task force was expected to assist with the rescue and relief operations.
The earthquake was also felt in Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and southern Mexico. There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage from those areas.
In Guatemala, however, a two-month-old baby died from injuries after her family home collapsed in the town of Moyuta, near the frontier with El Salvador, the child's father, Gregorio Quinonez, said.
Firefighters said a man died near the Guatemalan capital, Guatemala City, when a rock shaken loose by the quake crashed onto his car.
San Salvador's international airport, 44 kilometers (27 miles) southeast of the city, was closed Saturday as officials assessed damage to the runway and installations.
The government was planning to open a military airport just outside the capital for relief flights.
Some 1,400 people died in El Salvador in a 1986 quake that measured 7.5 on the Richter scale. Ten years earlier, an earthquake of the same intensity killed 26,000 people in Guatemala.
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