A fresh tremor rattled Ecuador overnight, a 6.1 magnitude jolt that was the strongest aftershock since a lethal earthquake killed hundreds of people on Saturday. There was no immediate report of further damage.
The US Geological Survey said the tremor was centered offshore, 25 km west of Muisne, at 3:33 a.m. local time. The previous strongest aftershock was magnitude 5.7.
Ecuadoreans have begun burying loved ones, while hopes faded that more survivors will be found.
The death toll was set to rise sharply after authorities warned that 1,700 people were still missing and anger gripped families of victims trapped in the rubble. It was Ecuador’s worst quake in nearly 40 years.
In the small town of Montecristi, near the port city of Manta, two children were among those buried Tuesday. They were killed with their mother while buying school supplies when the magnitude-7.8 quake struck Saturday night.
The funeral had to be held outside under a makeshift awning, because the town’s Roman Catholic church was unsafe from structural damage. Family members wailed loudly and one man fainted as the children were laid to rest in an above-ground vault.
Scenes of mourning multiplied all along Ecuador’s normally placid Pacific coastline, where the tremor flattened towns and killed hundreds. Funeral homes are running out of caskets to accommodate so many casualties, and local governments are paying to bring in caskets from other cities.
The National Prosecutors Office put the death toll at 525 on Wednesday, up from a previous official toll of 507, but officials expected more bodies to be found, with the Defense Department reporting Tuesday that more than 200 people were still missing.
The office said on its official Twitter account Wednesday that there were at least 11 foreigners among the dead. It said that of the 525 fatal victims, 15 people remained unidentified but none was foreign.
The office said 435 of the dead were found in the Manta, Portoviejo and Pedernales areas.
The final toll could surpass casualties from earthquakes in Chile and Peru in the past decade.
Even as grief mounted, there were glimmers of hope.
In several cities Tuesday rescuers with sniffer dogs, hydraulic jacks and special probes that can detect breathing from far away continued to search for survivors among the rubble. At least six were found in Manta early Tuesday.
One of the most-hopeful tales was that of Pablo Cordova, who held out for 36 hours beneath the rubble of the hotel where he worked in Portoviejo, drinking his own urine and praying that cellphone service would be restored before his phone battery died. He was finally able to call his wife Monday afternoon and was pulled from the wreckage soon after by a team of rescuers from Colombia
Cordova’s wife had given up on ever seeing him again and managed to buy a casket.
Three days after the powerful 7.8-magnitude quake struck Ecuador’s Pacific coast in a zone popular with tourists, 480 people are known to have died, the government said Tuesday.
Sniffer dogs and mechanical diggers were busy at work in the wreckage of coastal towns such as Pedernales and Manta as the stench of rotting bodies grew stronger under the baking sun.
International rescuers and aid groups rushed to help victims as searchers dug for families trapped in the debris of homes, hotels and businesses.
“We have 2,000 people listed that are being looked for, but we have so far found 300,” Deputy Interior Minister Diego Fuentes told reporters in the capital Quito.
Some 4,605 people were injured, according to the latest government figures.
In a glimmer of good news as he toured the affected areas, President Rafael Correa said that 54 people had been rescued alive from the rubble.
Still, hope of finding more victims alive was fading fast as the crucial three-day mark was reached late Tuesday.
Locals in devastated towns such as Manta, population 253,000, started to lose patience.
Source: Arab News