QUITO, Ecuador, April 18 (UPI) — The death toll from one of the most powerful earthquakes to hit Ecuador in decades has risen past 350, officials said Monday, and left thousands of others injured and homeless.
More than 2,000 people were injured in the major earthquake that struck Saturday evening — the most powerful to hit the South American nation in decades. The epicenter was in the coastal province of Esmeraldas. Search and rescue operations were still underway Monday.
“I fear that figure will go up because we keep on removing rubble,” Correa said in a televised address. “There are signs of life in the rubble, and that is being prioritized.”
The town of Portoviejo was one of the hardest hit areas, where more than 100 are reported dead and nearly 400 buildings have been destroyed.
“It looks like a war zone,” resident Viviana Baquezea told The New York Times. “It’s incredible what was happened to us — that our city is destroyed and we’re experiencing such anguish and pain.”
Correa declared a state of emergency, and about 10,000 troops and 3,500 police officers have been deployed to affected areas. The earthquake was the largest in Ecuador since 1979. More than 130 aftershocks followed.
The Ecuadorian president previously said the death toll would “surely rise, and in a considerable way.”
“Everything can be rebuilt, but lives cannot be recovered, and that’s what hurts the most,” he said.
“We were preparing to transmit a local football game when everything started to shake and the people fled in panic,” José Vaca, a television producer for OromarTV told the Times. “I had to to avoid being crushed by the people. I have some scrapes. But what I see around me is really terrible, startling and very sad.”
The U.S. Department of State said no U.S. citizens have been reported killed in the earthquake, but Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said two Canadians were killed.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the earthquake struck at a fairly shallow depth of 11.9 miles in a sparsely populated area outside Muisne. The United Nations said it delivered 20,000 water purification tablets to Pedernales, a city close to the epicenter.
Saturday’s earthquake, which some witnesses claim lasted for as long as a minute, is the worst to hit Ecuador since the 1970s. Some geologists said the 7.8 temblor was roughly 20 times stronger than the one that hit southern Japan just hours earlier.
