PERU: Desperation in Peru as toll mounts from quake
- 00:00:08
- ITN Source
PERU: Desperation in Peru as toll mounts from quake
Grief, desperation and anger engulf survivors of Peru's worst earthquake in three decades. This was the scene along the Pan-American Highway in Peru on Thursday (August 16) - gaping holes marking the 48,000 kilometre-long road in the wake of a devastating earthquake. Alongside the road, toppled trucks lay on their side as buses and trucks tried to weave their way out of the disaster zone and to safety. For many desperate families, the only way out was to walk. One truck driver complained of being stranded overnight on the highway. "Since last night at 7.15pm, we've been here. I was en route to Lima carrying produce," said this driver. But they were the lucky ones. In plazas in the town of Pisco, scores of bodies were placed on pavements waiting for rescue crews to collect the dead. With the death toll from the quake, which measured 8.0 on the Richter scale, now standing at 437, the focus is shifting on how to help the tens of thousands of survivors left homeless by the quake. But the task is monumental. In Pisco, one of the city's hospitals has been destroyed. The sick and the injured were being treated in the open air on Thursday at a basketball court - open to the winter chill. "The earthquake was of such magnitude that it destroyed the Social Security Hospital as well as the health ministry's hospital, we've done everything to tend to the most seriously injured," said official Omar Quesada. President Alan Garcia visited the city of Pisco - which local reports say has been 70 percent destroyed by the quake. As Garcia viewed bodies lined up on the street, some locals jeered the president and demanded urgent help. Meanwhile relatives began burying their dead as some of the more seriously injured were transferred via helicopter to hospitals in Lima. In Pisco, President Garcia told reporters he expected the death toll to rise. "The last official report that will be updated within an hour reports 337 dead, and 829 people seriously injured, many of them in a grave condition and sadly I think these numbers are going to increase," said Garcia. Rescuers meanwhile continued their grim tour of duty of the city - picking up bodies of people who died in their homes and on the streets. In Lima, dozens of people flocked to blood banks to donate blood for earthquake victims.
ITN Source | August 17, 2007
