Peru: President appeals for order after looting

Peruvian President Alan Garcia called for the orderly distribution of emergency supplies as desperate victims of a magnitude-8 earthquake on Peru’s southern coast looted markets and blocked arriving aid lorries.

The delivery of goods “must be gradual”, Garcia told reporters, adding he ordered 200 navy officials to the area to maintain order.

But television images showed hungry survivors leaving pharmacies and markets with bags full of food and other items. Some people ransacked a public market, while mobs looted a refrigerated trailer and blocked aid trucks.

Few buildings still stood in the fishing city of Pisco in the wake of a quake that struck on Wednesday afternoon, killing at least 510 people.

Many of the structures not reduced to rubble were rickety deathtraps waiting to fall.

Garcia predicted that “a situation approaching normality” would return in 10 days, but acknowledged that reconstruction would take far longer.

Two days after the earthquake all but levelled this city of 90,000 people on Peru’s desert southern coast, workers continued to pull bodies from rubble.

The death count stood at 510, according to Peru’s fire department, and hopes of finding more survivors diminished.

At least 1,500 people suffered injuries and Garcia said 80,000 people had lost loved ones, homes or both.

Yesterday afternoon, a Peruvian navy helicopter carrying food and medicine crash landed on to the roof of a one-storey building in Ica, near Pisco’s main plaza, local media said.

No injuries were reported.

The relief effort was finally getting organised.

Police identified bodies and civil defence teams ferried in food.

Housing officials assessed the need for new homes, and in several towns long lines formed under intense sun to collect water from soldiers.

In the capital of Lima, Peruvians donated tons of supplies as food, water, tents and blankets began arriving in the quake zone.

Peruvian soldiers also began distributing aluminium caskets, allowing the first funerals.

In Pisco’s cemetery, lined with collapsed tombs and tumbled crosses, a man painted the names of the dead on headstones – some 200 were lined up.

All day, people with no way to refrigerate corpses rushed coffins through the cemetery gate, which leaned dangerously until a bulldozer came to knock it down.

Amid the destruction, Canal N television reported that a woman identified as Ericka Gutierrez gave birth to a son in a makeshift hospital in Pisco.

“Now everything is new for me,” said the baby’s father, Jesus Boquillaza, whose home was destroyed. “My son will give me the strength to go forward. I’m very happy because now I have a new life and someone to fight for.”

More aftershocks jolted the region, frightening survivors, who fell to their knees in prayer, but doing little damage.

At least 18 tremors of magnitude-5 or greater had struck since the initial quake.

Rescue workers still held out hope of finding survivors but searchers were having little luck as they went road to road in Pisco, shouting into piles of brick and mortar: “We’re firefighters! If you can hear us, shout or strike something!”

The US government released $150,000 (€111,000) in cash to pay for emergency supplies and dispatched medical teams – one of which was already on the ground. It also sent two mobile clinics and loaned two helicopters to Peruvian authorities.

But the US Navy hospital ship Comfort, now docked in Ecuador, will not make the three-day trip to Pisco because both governments decided it was not needed.

The Comfort carries 800 medical personnel, but Peru needs supplies more than doctors, US Embassy spokesman Dan Martinez said.