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Saturday January 13 5:17 PM ET 12 Killed in Central America Quake

By MARCOS ALEMAN, Associated Press Writer

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) - A major earthquake shook Central America on Saturday, cracking buildings, blocking roads and collapsing a hillside that buried scores of homes. At least 12 people were killed, and the death toll was certain to rise.

Salvadoran President Francisco Flores declared a national emergency and appealed for international aid, especially for experts at searching for buried victims.

``There is my boy! Help me! Help me!'' wailed Carmen de Marin, a 41-year-old woman weeping beside the buried ruins of her house in the middle class Las Colinas neighborhood west of the capital, San Salvador.

She said her 12-year-old son Jaime Ernesto Marin had stayed home to await a phone call from his father in the United States when she went out shopping shortly before the 7.6-magnitude quake hit at about 11:35 a.m. She returned to the destroyed house.

Flores told a news conference that at least four people had died and 100 were reported injured in the quake. Two other deaths were reported in Guatemala.

But an Associated Press reporter saw 12 cadavers at the Las Colinas disaster site alone. News of the damage was slowed by the fact much of El Salvador's telephone service and electricity was knocked out by the quake.

Hundreds of rescuers frantically ripped at the earth with sticks and bare hands to reach those still buried.

``This is terrible. I don't think we will be able to pull out any victims; everything has been buried,'' said David Lara, a rescue worker struggling at the mass of dirt and concrete with a shovel.

``I felt an earthquake and all the hill came down and covered the houses,'' said Candido Salinas, 60, who lives across the street from the slide zone.

Flores said another landslide had buried homes in the Berlin area, and the Pan American Highway to Santa Ana, 35 miles to the northwest, was blocked.

The quake was centered off the Salvadoran coast, about 65 miles southwest of San Miguel, according to the U.S. Geological Survey in Denver, Colo. Buildings swayed in Mexico City, about 600 miles to the northwest.

It took more than an hour for some San Salvador radio stations to return to the air and telephone service remained spotty at mid-afternoon. There were cracked buildings and shattered windows across the city of 500,000.

Officials at San Salvador's international airport said all flights had been halted and damaged buildings there were evacuated.

Most businesses in the city also were closed - though in a surreal touch, acrobats and dancers from a touring circus marched through the streets past frightened people, using a loudspeaker to promote a coming performance.

Salvadoran Red Cross spokesman Carlos Lopez Mendoza said some roads were blocked on the edge of the capital, and there were reports of a bus buried by a landslide in Tecolouca, east of San Salvador.

Police in neighboring Guatemala said a man and a 2-year-old girl were killed and three other people were injured when a pair of homes collapsed in the city of Jalpataua.

Local radio stations reported the collapse of a church in Suchitepequez, in southern Guatemala.

The quake set off car alarms and temporarily knocked out electricity, radio, television and cellular phone service all over Guatemala, but most service was quickly restored.

Honduran officials reported cracked buildings in several cities, but there were no reports of injuries.

-- K (infosurf@yahoo.com), January 13, 2001

Answers

At least 61 dead in Central American earthquake

By MARCOS ALEMAN, Associated Press SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (January 13, 2001 8:25 p.m. EST http://www.nandotimes.com) - A major earthquake shook Central America on Saturday, cracking buildings, blocking roads and burying scores of homes. The Red Cross said at least 61 people were killed.

Salvadoran President Francisco Flores declared a national emergency and appealed for international aid, especially for experts at searching for buried victims.

Red Cross spokesman Carlos Lopez Mendoza said his agency had reports of at least 61 deaths from around the country -- though in many cases bodies had not yet been recovered.

Two other deaths from the 7.6-magnitude quake were reported in neighboring Guatemala.

Lopez estimated that 500 houses had been destroyed in the middle class Las Colinas neighborhood west of the capital, San Salvador. The wall of a hospital collapsed in the town of San Miguel and 25 people were known to be dead in a small village nearby.

"There is my boy! Help me! Help me!" wailed Carmen de Marin, a 41- year-old woman weeping beside the buried ruins of her house at Las Colinas.

She said her 12-year-old son Jaime Ernesto Marin had stayed home to await a phone call from his father in the United States when she went out shopping shortly before the quake hit at about 11:35 a.m.

An Associated Press reporter saw 12 bodies at the Las Colinas disaster site alone.

News of the damage was slowed by the fact much of El Salvador's telephone service and electricity was knocked out by the quake for several hours.

Hundreds of rescuers frantically ripped at the earth with sticks and bare hands to reach those still buried.

"This is terrible. I don't think we will be able to pull out any victims; everything has been buried," said David Lara, a rescue worker struggling at the mass of dirt and concrete with a shovel.

"I felt an earthquake and all the hill came down and covered the houses," said Candido Salinas, 60, who lives across the street from the slide zone.

Flores said another landslide had buried homes in the Berlin area, and the Pan American Highway to Santa Ana, 35 miles to the northwest, was blocked.

The quake was centered off the Salvadoran coast, about 65 miles southwest of San Miguel, according to the U.S. Geological Survey in Denver, Colo. Buildings swayed in Mexico City, about 600 miles to the northwest.

It took more than an hour for some San Salvador radio stations to return to the air and telephone service remained spotty at mid- afternoon. There were cracked buildings and shattered windows across the city of 500,000.

Officials at San Salvador's international airport said all flights had been halted and damaged buildings there were evacuated.

Most businesses in the city also were closed -- though in a surreal touch, acrobats and dancers from a touring circus marched through the streets past frightened people, using a loudspeaker to promote a coming performance.

Police in neighboring Guatemala said a man and a 2-year-old girl were killed and three other people were injured when a pair of homes collapsed in the city of Jalpataua.

Local radio stations reported the collapse of a church in Suchitepequez, in southern Guatemala.

The quake set off car alarms and temporarily knocked out electricity, radio, television and cellular phone service all over Guatemala, but most service was quickly restored.

Honduran officials reported cracked buildings in several cities, but there were no reports of injuries.

A 1986 earthquake centered near San Salvador killed an estimated 1,500 people and injured 8,000.

http://www.nandotimes.com/global/story/0,1024,500299401-500478033- 503268134-0,00.html

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), January 13, 2001.

Earthquake Kills Hundreds in Central America

By David Rivas Reuters

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (Jan. 14) - At least 381 people were dead, 779 injured and hundreds missing in El Salvador on Sunday, a day after a strong earthquake struck the Central American nation, setting off landslides and burying hundreds of homes.

President Francisco Flores said in a news conference that the death toll could go higher and material damage was still incalculable.

"We have made a request to the government of Colombia for 3,000 coffins to put at the disposition of citizens," he said. "Any evaluation of damage and what it will take to rebuild is still very premature."

Some 1,336 people had been evacuated, the National Emergency Committee said. The committee estimated earlier in the day that at least 1,200 people were still missing.

Most of the dead were being pulled from the rubble in the San Salvador suburb of Santa Tecla, where a massive mudslide engulfed as many as 500 homes.

"Everything was buried, and my entire family is dead," one Santa Tecla resident said.

Hundreds of emergency workers and volunteers worked alongside cranes to shovel dirt from around collapsed homes in a sea of mud, tree limbs and rubble while dazed survivors milled around the mounds where their homes once stood.

Guatemalan officials said four more bodies were discovered in that country on Sunday, raising the death toll there to six from an earthquake felt across Central America and as far north as Mexico City.

The 7.6-magnitude quake occurred at 11:34 a.m. (1734 GMT) on Saturday and was felt across El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Honduras and as far north as Mexico City.

HUNDREDS OF AFTERSHOCKS

President Flores, who declared a state of emergency on Saturday, called for calm as up to 500 aftershocks, some of them fierce, continued to cause panic and drive people out of houses and offices in San Salvador, the capital, and elsewhere more than 24 hours after the quake.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake's epicenter was about 65 miles (105 km) southeast of San Salvador, off the Pacific coast.

In Santa Tecla's middle-class neighborhoods, where a hillside collapsed on as many as 500 homes, hope gave way to resignation as more bodies were recovered.

"There was more hope yesterday than today. ... It's more difficult now," said Clarise Lopez, who lost an aunt in the landslide. "All we have left to do is look for them."

"I'll be honest. I have no hope of finding him alive," Oscar Lopez said of his 10-year-old son, Javier, as he sat atop the rubble of his home.

Onlookers said the neighborhood looked from a distance as if a giant cup of coffee had been tipped down the hillside, spilling across the upscale homes arranged in a grid.

"In all of my life I've never experienced anything like this. No one who hasn't been through an earthquake can understand how it feels," said Julian Salguero, 47, staying with his family at a refugee center set up in a sports stadium in Santa Tecla after losing his home to the mudslide.

"This is one of the worst emergencies we have had," rescue worker Manuel de Jesus Guzman told Reuters.

ENTIRE COUNTRY SHAKEN

At least 1,000 people died in a 1986 earthquake in El Salvador, a country slightly smaller than Massachusetts, and witnesses said Saturday's quake rivaled the 1986 disaster in breadth and violence.

"Not one of the 14 provinces was unaffected," said Eduardo Caliz, the ambassador to Mexico. "The 1987 earthquake was more intense, but it was much more concentrated around the capital. We believe we still do not know the true magnitude of this disaster."

Officials said about 40 or 50 local and foreign tourists were believed trapped on a volcano on the outskirts of San Salvador and rescuers were trying to reach them.

Serious damage was also reported in the Pacific coast provinces of La Libertad and Usulutan and in the north around the city of Santa Ana. Many other areas were badly hit.

An overflow of the injured was being treated in tents on the grounds of hospitals in the capital, some of which suffered serious damage in the quake.

The United States, Mexico, Switzerland, Spain and Venezuela were among the first countries to mobilize relief efforts for El Salvador, and foreign aid, including money, medical supplies and wool blankets, was starting to flow in.

Earthquake-prone Taiwan -- struck by a quake of the same magnitude on Sept. 21, 1999, which killed 2,400 people and wrecked 50,000 buildings islandwide -- said it would send 20 to 30 rescue workers to El Salvador.

The U.S. Agency for International Development said the United States would send helicopters to help assess the damage and target specific areas for relief. Spain was preparing to send a team of 75 firefighters and 24 dogs to search for survivors.

The United Nations, the European Union, France, Panama and even earthquake-struck Guatemala were sending relief.

19:31 01-14-01

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