fan Vera A strong earthquake shook parts of Ecuador, killing three relatives. Peru Took down his niece’s house on Saturday. The government has offered to cover the funeral costs of the woman, baby and partner, but Vera wonders why local authorities allowed his relatives to live in such an old house.
“It’s an old building, so it should have been demolished already,” Bella said outside a morgue in Ecuador’s Machala community, where three bodies were waiting to be released. “…I’m sorry, but the Mayor’s Office is the one who has to regulate these things through the planning department so that the building is in good condition for rent and habitation.”
The 6.8-magnitude quake, reported by the U.S. Geological Survey, killed at least 15 people, injured hundreds, and destroyed homes and buildings in areas ranging from coastal areas to highlands. But in Ecuador, many of the collapsed houses had a lot in common, regardless of their geographical location. The houses were poor, old, and did not meet the building codes of an earthquake-prone country.
The epicenter of the quake was off the Pacific coast, about 80 km south of Ecuador’s second largest city, Guayaquil. One of his victims died in Peru and 14 others died in Ecuador. Authorities also reported that at least 381 people were injured and dozens of homes, schools and medical centers were damaged.
Ecuador’s presidential office, Guillermo Lasso, said 12 of the victims died in the coastal state of El Oro and two in the highland state of Azuay.
According to the Risk Management Secretariat, Ecuador’s emergency response agency, one of the victims of Azuai was a passenger in a car that was crushed by debris from a home in the Andean community of Cuenca.
In El Oro, authorities reported several people trapped under rubble. In Machala’s community, his two-story house collapsed before people were evacuated, the pier collapsed, and the walls of the building cracked, trapping an unknown number of people.
Quito-based architect Gelman Narváez says the homes most affected during an earthquake are those that are poorly constructed, lacking foundations, structures and technical design. He added that the houses are also old and built with materials such as adobe, which were once frequently used in Andean communities.
“At key moments of seismic motion, they tend to collapse,” he said.
Ecuador is a particularly earthquake-prone country. In 2016, more than 600 people were killed in an earthquake centered in a sparsely populated area further north on the Pacific coast.
In Peru, the quake was felt from its northern border with Ecuador to the central Pacific coast. Peruvian Prime Minister Alberto Otarola said his four-year-old girl had died after suffering a head injury when his home in the Tumbes region on the border with Ecuador collapsed.
Peruvian authorities also reported the destruction of four houses in Tumbes and the collapse of an old wall of a military barracks.
Saturday’s earthquake destroyed Dolores Vaca’s home in Machala. The moment she felt the first shock, she said, she ran out into the street while her husband managed to drag her daughter away. she said.
Vaca’s neighbors weren’t so lucky. She said five people died when her neighbor’s house collapsed.
In Guayaquil, about 270 kilometers southwest of the capital, Quito, authorities reported cracks in buildings and homes and several walls collapsing. A video shared on social media shows people gathering on the streets of Guayaquil, which supports the metropolitan area and neighboring communities of more than 3 million people.
One video posted online showed the three Show Darts anchors from their studio desks as the set rocked. They initially tried to shake it off as a minor earthquake, but quickly fled the cameras. God” repeated.
A report from Ecuador’s Adverse Events Monitoring Agency ruled out a tsunami threat.
Catherine Cruz, a student at Machala, said her house shook so badly that she could not even get up and fled into the street.
“It was terrible. I never felt anything like this in my life,” she said.
Garcia Cano reported from Caracas, Venezuela. Associated Press writer Franklin Briceño in Lima, Peru contributed to this report.
