Terremoto en Peru

Hello everyone,
I want to assure you all that all is safe in Trujillo and the rest of Northern Peru in case you heard about the earthquake on the news. The 8 magnitude earthquake centered around Chincha Alta in the south.I did, however, experience a 10minute tremor around 6:30 on Wednesday night. Please pray for the families of the more than 300 people that died and for the reconstruction of homes and restoration of property. This is devastating to the people. Perumission is mobilizing efforts at this moment to help in any way possible. Pray that we find the time, energy, and resources in order to do this. I have included some pictures and an article.

Earthquake in Peru Kills Hundreds

By LAURA PUERTAS and JON ELSEN

Published: August 16, 2007

LIMA, Peru, Aug. 16 — A powerful earthquake shook Peru Wednesday night, killing at least 337 people, Civil Defense authorities said today. Another 1,350 were injured, according to Peru’s Health Ministry.

Most of the repo

rted dead were in the Ica region, south of the capital, which emergency workers said appeared to be the area that was hardest hit. The earthquake, whose magnitude was variously estimated at 7.7 to 7.9, was centered off Peru’s Pacific shore near Ica.

Many people were killed in the rubble of their homes, and some 300 people were in a cathedral when it collapsed. Emergency workers said the overall death toll from the quake, which struck at 6:40 p.m. local time, might be even greater.

It was not immediately clear how many foreigners may have been among the casualties. News agencies carried reports that at least one American was known to have died.

The city of Ica was blacked out, as were smaller towns along the coast south of Lima, and many of the areas hit lost telephone service. Rescue workers reported difficulty getting to Ica and the coastal towns because of cracks in highways and downed power lines.

Three hospitals and a clinic in Ica were flooded with people seeking aid, and some of the injured were being attended to in hallways, according to local media reports.

A cathedral in the hard-hit port city of Pisco was destroyed, according to local media reports, which said some 300 people were inside attending mass at the time the building fell.

Another 26 people were killed when part of a hospital in Pisco collapsed, many of them patients in their beds, the DPA news agency reported. Fernando Barrios, the president of the hospital, appealed for the injured to be taken to Lima, because the remainder of the Pisco hospital is without water or electricity and is unable to treat them.

Andina, the state news agency, said that a special flight path had been established to s been set up to ferry badly injured people from the hardest hit areas to Lima by air, to relieve overcrowding in local hospitals.

Mayor Juan Mendoza Uribe of Pisco said that 70 percent of the city of about 60,000 people, located 135 miles south of Lima, was leveled by the quake.

“So much effort and our city is destroyed,” he said, crying audibly, in comments broadcast on radio station RPP in Lima. The city remained without electricity this morning. Hundreds of families slept on the streets outside ruined houses, according to Andina, and 25 bodies were placed in front of municipal buildings after the morgue filled to capacity.

The president of Peru, Alan Garcia, arrived in Pisco around late in the morning to view the damage firsthand, the agency reported.

A wall collapsed at the Tambo de Mora prison in Chincha, another town hit hard by the earthquake, and about 680 prisoners escaped, according to Manuel Aguilar, vice president of the National Institute of Penetentiaries. About 29 were recaptured and transferred to another jail, he said.

Office workers in Lima fled tall buildings that shook in two waves that lasted around 20 seconds each and cut power lines, Reuters reported.

“I was in class on the fifth floor, and suddenly everything started to shake and glass began falling,” said Carolina Montero, 37, a banking administrator and finance student who lives in Callao, a coastal city near Lima. “People got extremely nervous.”

Fernando Calderon, an American in Lima, said he was in his hotel when the quake struck. He described the scene as unreal, with buildings swaying from right to left, and the ground shaking.

“We realized everybody was out, and the ground was shaking for a minute,” he said by telephone in an interview with CNN. “Finally we started hearing glass breaking, and things falling out of the building and that’s when everybody started screaming, praying, children crying. It was just awful.”

Electra Anderson, another American, told CNN by telephone from her apartment in Peru that it seemed when the quake began that many people had no idea what was happening, and ran into the streets screaming and crying.

“We’re used to earthquakes,” said Ms. Anderson, who is from California. “But it just didn’t stop; it kept going and going, and it kept getting stronger and stronger.”

She added that she counted about 70 aftershocks: “It’s just been non-stop.”

Her belongings in the apartment went flying and the glass windows appeared to be bending in. “People really thought they were going to die,” Ms. Anderson said.

Peruvian officials said there had been a total of more than 320 aftershocks, the strongest reaching a magnitude of about 6.

Offers of aid quickly poured in from many countries, including Spain, France, Venezuela and Colombia. The state news agency said that Chile, which recalled its ambassador to Peru, Christian Barros, earlier in the week because of a dispute over maritime boundaries between the two countries, would send Mr. Barros back to Lima immediately to help coordinate rescue and aid efforts.

Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for President Bush, said in Texas this morning that the United States was ready to provide aid and assistance, and that a team from the Agency for International Development was in Lima assessing the situation and coordinating with the Peruvian government. American search and rescue teams were standing by to go to Peru if they are needed there, Mr. Johndroe said.

The United States Geological Survey said the earthquake struck about 90 miles southeast of Lima at a depth of about 25 miles. Four strong aftershocks ranging from magnitudes of 5.4 to 5.9 followed.

A tsunami warning was issued for coastal areas of Peru, Chile, Ecuador and Colombia, and a small tsunami was detected, but it posed no major threat and the warning was later lifted, news services reported.

The last time a quake of magnitude 7.0 or larger struck Peru was in September 2005, when a 7.5 magnitude earthquake rocked Peru’s northern jungle, killing four people. In 2001, a 7.9-magnitude quake struck near the southern Andean city of Arequipa, killing 71 people.