LIMA, Peru, Aug. 16 — A powerful earthquake shook Peru Wednesday night, killing at least 337 people, Civil Defense authorities said today. Another 1,350 were injured, according to Peru’s Health Ministry
Most of the reported dead were in the region near Ica, south of the capital, which emergency workers said appeared to be the area that was hardest hit. The earthquake, whose magnitude was estimated at 7.9, was centered off Peru’s Pacific shore near Ica.
Many people were killed in the rubble of their homes, and some 300 people were in a cathedral when it collapsed. Emergency workers said the overall death toll might be even greater.
Ica was blacked out, as were smaller towns along the coast south of Lima. Rescue workers reported difficulty getting to Ica because of cracks in the highway and downed power lines.
A cathedral in the hard-hit port city of Pisco was destroyed, according to local media reports, which said some 300 people were inside the structure during a mass at the time of the earthquake.
Mayor Juan Mendoza Uribe of Pisco said that 70 percent of the port city of about 60,000 people, located 135 miles south of Lima, was leveled by the quake.
“So much effort and our city is destroyed,” he said, crying audibly, in comments broadcast on radio station RPP in Lima.
The city remained without electricity this morning.
Hundreds of families were sleeping on the streets of the city this morning, according to Andina, Peru’s state news agency, and 25 bodies were placed in front of municipal buildings after the morgue filled to capacity.
Office workers in Lima fled tall buildings that shook in two waves that lasted around 20 seconds each and cut power lines, Reuters reported.
“I was in class on the fifth floor, and suddenly everything started to shake and glass began falling,” said Carolina Montero, 37, a banking administrator and finance student who lives in Callao, a coastal city near Lima. “People got extremely nervous.”
Fernando Calderon, an American in Lima, said he was in his hotel when the quake struck. He described the scene as unreal, with buildings swaying from right to left, and the ground shaking.
“We realized everybody was out, and the ground was shaking for a minute,” he said by telephone in an interview with CNN. “Finally we started hearing glass breaking, and things falling out of the building and that’s when everybody started screaming, praying, children crying. It was just awful.”
Electra Anderson, another American, told CNN by telephone from her apartment in Peru that it seemed when the quake began that many people had no idea what was happening, and ran into the streets screaming and crying.
“We’re used to earthquakes,” said Ms. Anderson, who is from California. “But it just didn’t stop; it kept going and going, and it kept getting stronger and stronger.”
She added that she counted about 70 aftershocks: “It’s just been non-stop.”
Her belongings in the apartment went flying and the glass windows appeared to be bending in. “People really thought they were going to die,” Ms. Anderson said.
The United States Geological Survey said the earthquake struck about 90 miles southeast of Lima at a depth of about 25 miles. Four strong aftershocks ranging from magnitudes of 5.4 to 5.9 followed.
A tsunami warning was issued for coastal areas of Peru, Chile, Ecuador and Colombia, and a small tsunami was detected, but it posed no major threat and the warning was later lifted, news services reported.
The last time a quake of magnitude 7.0 or larger struck Peru was in September 2005, when a 7.5 magnitude earthquake rocked Peru’s northern jungle, killing four people. In 2001, a 7.9-magnitude quake struck near the southern Andean city of Arequipa, killing 71 people.
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