Peruvians struggle to rebuild after quake leaves 71 dead

The Peruvian Government has announced an emergency plan to help many of the areas affected by Saturday's 8.1-magnitude earthquake.

Peruvian Foreign Minister Javier Perez de Cuellar says a priority will be delivering aid to the homeless.

At least 71 people died in the tremor, more than 1,000 were injured and thousands more were left homeless.

With many of their homes destroyed residents have begun the painstaking process of cleaning up and rebuilding.

Many are seeking hammers and bricks to rebuild their homes. Others are braced for what promises to be a long and frustrating return to normality.

"We don't have anything," said Augustin Chuquimamani, mixing mortar and laying a fresh brick wall for his one-room house. "We don't have a kitchen, we don't even have metal sheets to a make a roof."

"All of us sleep on the ground," said Felicina, his wife. "It gets very cold - so cold that the kids start crying."

Across southern Peru, people pushed wheelbarrows and helped neighbours comb through shattered homes two days after the quake. Coated in dust, many searched for belongings amid mounds of wreckage and chunks of broken rock.

Others set about the task of repairing homes, colonial churches and hundreds of businesses flattened by a temblor that shook the region for more than a minute.

After reviewing data on the temblor, geophysicists at the US Geological Survey in Golden, Colorado, upgraded the quake's magnitude from 7.9 to 8.1, qualifying the temblor as "great" - the highest grade for earthquakes.