Aid efforts under way after killer quake

Peru was today rushing aid to its southern cities and towns after a 7.9-magnitude earthquake toppled homes and killed at least 71 people, leaving thousands too terrified to return home amid recurring aftershocks.

In Arequipa, the country’s second largest city, dozens of homes were flattened and chunks of ornate stone architecture were strewn in the streets of the colonial centre. One steeple fell from the city’s historic cathedral first constructed in 1656 but rebuilt after an earthquake in 1868 and large pieces of stonework fell out of the other.

The city’s San Agustin Church withstood Saturday’s quake, which injured more than 850 people in the region. But worshippers held Mass outdoors Sunday after a tense night of aftershocks.

Peru’s Geophysical Institute said Sunday that 106 aftershocks, some registering a 3-magnitude, had occurred since the initial quake.

A landslide blocked the main road into Moquegua, 62 miles south east of Arequipa, hampering efforts to deliver emergency food and medicine to the devastated city, where 17 people were killed, 162 injured and 80% of the houses seriously damaged or flattened.

There were conflicting reports about how many people died in the 7.9-magnitude quake, which rocked the region for more than a minute Saturday afternoon.

Peru’s Civil Defence Institute on Sunday raised the death toll to 71. In addition to the Moquegua deaths, the institute said rescuers found 33 more bodies yesterday around Arequipa, 465 miles south east of the capital Lima, to bring the total number of dead in that area to 47. Some 564 people were injured there.

The institute said another seven people were killed in Tacna, near the border with Chile and some 200 people were injured.

A doctor in the small coastal town of Camana said 14 people drowned and more than 30 were injured after the quake caused a tidal surge that washed more than half a mile inland over rice and sugar cane fields. But those deaths could not be confirmed and were not included in the total.

Hundreds of people camped out in parks and in the streets of Arequipa overnight despite 5 degree Celsius temperatures, radio reports said.

President Valentin Paniagua flew over the devastated area in a helicopter with his health minister yesterday. Later, he appealed for calm and patience to ensure effective aid efforts.

He said from the airport in Tacna that officials ‘‘were ready to adopt any and all measures that are necessary to get help quickly’’ to those who need it.

Two cargo planes stocked with 22 tons of food, blankets and medicine landed in Arequipa before dawn. Three other planes were en route to Moquegua and Tacna, the Civil Defence said.

US Ambassador to Peru John Hamilton, who was in Arequipa when the quake struck, said material aid from the United States would start arriving within two days. The European Union said Sunday it was awaiting aid requests from humanitarian agencies and would mobilise funding quickly under new streamlined procedures.

President-elect Alejandro Toledo, who takes office on July 28, postponed a visit to the United States and instead flew to Arequipa.

He said he still planned to go to Washington and Europe in the coming days to seek aid for an economic recovery plan and quake assistance.

The quake rattled residents in Lima and was felt in Bolivia, 260 miles east of the epicentre, and in Chile, 225 miles south east.

Peru is intermittently shaken by earthquakes, and was battered by a 7.7-magnitude temblor in May 31, 1970, that killed about 70,000 people.

On November 12, 1996, 17 people were killed and some 1,500 injured in a 7.7-magnitude quake that struck Nazca. On May 30, 1990, 137 people were killed in a 6.3-magnitude quake in northern Peru.