Dozens
killed as 7.8-magnitude earthquake hits Ecuador
Fearful
residents stream into streets of the capital Quito while major city
of Guayaquil is among places worst hit
Reuters in Quito
Sunday 17 April 2016
09.05 BST
Ecuador’s Pacific
coast was struck by the country’s strongest earthquake in decades,
a 7.8-magnitude tremor that has killed at least 77 people, flattened
buildings and damaged roads near the epicentre, as well as in the
country’s largest city of Guayaquil.
President Rafael
Correa declared a national emergency and urged the country’s 16
million people to stay calm. More than 570 people are believed to
have been injured in the quake.
“Our infinite love
to the families of the dead,” he said on Twitter, while cutting
short a trip to Italy to return home.
The government
recommended residents leave coastal areas after concerns for rising
tides following the quake.
Alarmed residents
streamed into the streets of the capital, Quito, hundreds of
kilometres away, and other towns across Ecuador.
The government said
the death toll would likely rise and damage was “serious”,
especially in the western coastal areas nearest the quake and in
Guayaquil.
The vice-president,
Jorge Glas,said it was the strongest quake to hit Ecuador since 1979.
“We continue to receive information,” he said, adding that 16
people had died in the city of Poroviejo, 10 in Manta and others in
the province of Guayas.
The country’s
Geophysics Institute in a bulletin described “considerable damage”
in the area of the epicentre and in Guayaquil, without providing
further details.
It said the
earthquake struck at about 8pm local time at a depth of 12.4 miles
(20km).
At least 36
aftershocks have followed, one as strong as six on the Richter scale,
and residents have been warned to brace themselves for even stronger
aftershocks in the coming hours.
Social media
pictures showed a crumbling bridge in Guayaquil and a collapsed tower
at an airport in the city of Manta, which injured an air traffic
control worker and a security guard.
“I was in my house
watching a movie and everything started to shake. I ran out into the
street and now I don’t know what’s going to happen,” said
Lorena Cazares, 36, a telecommunications worker in Quito.
Parts of the capital
were left without power or telephone service, with many communicating
only via WhatsApp. Photos on social media showed cracks in the walls
of shopping centres. The capital’s municipal government later said
power had been restored and there were no reports of casualties.
“There are
villages that are totally devastated,” said Gabriel AlcÃvar,
mayor of the city of Pedernales in the hard-hit province of Manabi,
in a radio interview. “What happened here in Pedernales is
catastrophic.”
AlcÃvar called
for more help from authorities to send earth-moving machines and
emergency rescue workers. “This wasn’t just a house that
collapsed, it was an entire town,” he said.
The Pacific Tsunami
Warning Center said tsunami waves reaching 0.3 to one metre (one to
three feet) above tide level were possible for some coastal areas of
Ecuador.
State officials said
the Opec nation’s oil production was not affected by the quake but
that the principal refinery of Esmeraldas, located near the
epicentre, had been halted as a precaution.
Neighbouring Peru
issued a tsunami alert for the north of the country following the
quake.
Across the Pacific
in Japan, a 7.3-magnitude tremor struck Kumamoto province early on
Saturday, killing at least 32 people, injuring about a thousand and
causing widespread damage, in the second major quake to hit the
island of Kyushu in just over 24 hours. The first, late on Thursday,
killed nine.
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