Aid groups yesterday struggled to distribute food, water and blankets to survivors of a devastating Peruvian earthquake that killed more than 500 people last week, as aftershocks continued to rattle the population.
The latest was a 4.7 magnitude aftershock that sparked panic among people lining up to leave this town by air and by bus on Monday, the day the rescue effort officially ended and bulldozers began removing mountains of rubble.
Humanitarian aid was flowing in from across the country, and from abroad, though still not sufficient for all those left homeless.
Peruvian President Alan Garcia announced the start of fumigation operations across the town to head off diseases before they turn into possible epidemics, and more than 1,000 police and soldiers were deployed to halt the looting that has sown fear among the battered population.
According to the latest count by the Civil Defense service, 540 people died across the whole quake-hit region of southern Peru, 1,039 were injured, and more than 176,000 people were left homeless.
A total of 35,000 homes were destroyed in the magnitude 8 temblor (7.7 on the Richter scale) that rumbled across southern Peru last Wednesday, most of them in Pisco, which was 70 percent destroyed.
Many survivors, weak and shivering from nights spent out in the open, were lining up for hours at the local air force base for flights taking them away from Pisco.
Other lines formed at town bus stops, where people paid up to US$40 for a ride to Lima or any other city unharmed by the quake.
Five days after the catastrophe, rescue operations wound up to the frustration of some rescue workers who believed there could still be more survivors.
"You feel so powerless when you don't get there in time. I have found lots of bodies, I don't know how many because I find it too hard to count them," firefighter Javier Vallero said.
The town's San Clemente church has been the focus for the grieving. The roof had collapsed in the quake, killing 160 people -- nearly half of the town's 335 identified dead.
On Monday, only the bell towers and part of the broken dome were still standing as heavy machinery knocked down the facade, deemed in danger of falling.
The risk of collapse of the few buildings left standing in Pisco was real and widespread.
"Just about all of them are dangerous," said a chief firefighter, Jose Varallanos.
The mostly poor families whose rudimentary adobe homes had come crashing down would be relocated to temporary lodgings being prepared while the clearing effort already underway intensified.
Still, families camping out in the open near their broken homes were reluctant to leave.
Bolivian President Evo Morales and his vice president pledged half their salaries to the earthquake victims, while Cabinet ministers gave one-quarter of their wages.
Ukraine’s military intelligence agency and the Pentagon on Monday said that some North Korean troops have been killed during combat against Ukrainian forces in Russia’s Kursk border region. Those are the first reported casualties since the US and Ukraine announced that North Korea had sent 10,000 to 12,000 troops to Russia to help it in the almost three-year war. Ukraine’s military intelligence agency said that about 30 North Korean troops were killed or wounded during a battle with the Ukrainian army at the weekend. The casualties occurred around three villages in Kursk, where Russia has for four months been trying to quash a
FREEDOM NO MORE: Today, protests in Macau are just a memory after Beijing launched measures over the past few years that chilled free speech A decade ago, the elegant cobblestone streets of Macau’s Tap Seac Square were jam-packed with people clamouring for change and government accountability — the high-water mark for the former Portuguese colony’s political awakening. Now as Macau prepares to mark the 25th anniversary of its handover to China tomorrow, the territory’s democracy movement is all but over and the protests of 2014 no more than a memory. “Macau’s civil society is relatively docile and obedient, that’s the truth,” said Au Kam-san (歐錦新), 67, a schoolteacher who became one of Macau’s longest-serving pro-democracy legislators. “But if that were totally true, we wouldn’t
SUPPORT: Elon Musk’s backing for the far-right AfD is also an implicit rebuke of center-right Christian Democratic Union leader Friedrich Merz, who is leading polls German Chancellor Olaf Scholz took a swipe at Elon Musk over his political judgement, escalating a spat between the German government and the world’s richest person. Scholz, speaking to reporters in Berlin on Friday, was asked about a post Musk made on his X platform earlier the same day asserting that only the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party “can save Germany.” “We have freedom of speech, and that also applies to multi-billionaires,” Scholz said alongside Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal. “But freedom of speech also means that you can say things that are not right and do not contain
TRUDEAU IN TROUBLE: US president-elect Donald Trump reacted to Chrystia Freeland’s departure, saying: ‘Her behavior was totally toxic, and not at all conducive to making deals Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland on Monday quit in a surprise move after disagreeing with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau over US president-elect Donald Trump’s tariff threats. The resignation of Freeland, 56, who also stepped down as finance minister, marked the first open dissent against Trudeau from within his Cabinet, and could threaten his hold on power. Liberal leader Trudeau lags 20 points in polls behind his main rival, Conservative Pierre Poilievre, who has tried three times since September to topple the government and force a snap election. “It’s not been an easy day,” Trudeau said at a fundraiser Monday evening, but
RSS