Severe Earthquake Hits Peru

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32312, 2 June 1970, Page 15

Severe Earthquake Hits Peru

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright)

LIMA, June 1.

An earthquake shook half of Peru yesterday, leaving dead and injured over an area from the desert coast to cities and towns high in the Andes, United Press International reported.

Some towns were reported destroyed. The earthquake struck at 325 p.m., routing many Peruvians from Sunday dinner.

Intermittent aftershocks continued throughout parts of the country into this morning.

Mr Emilio Solorzano, a spokesman for the Peruvian National Disaster Office, said: “There is absolutely no way to estimate the number of dead and injured. The only thing we can tell you is that we have areas of this coun-i try severely affected.”

A radio communication to the Lima newspaper. “El

Comercio,” said that there were at least 100 dead i the city of Huaraz, 216 miles north-west of Lima.

' The radio operator told the newspaper: “Our city has been destroyed.” The Panamericana television station estimated the dead at 200. I The National Geophysics Institute in Lima said' that the earthquake. which reached its maximum intensity in two minutes and continued jolting parts of Peru, measured 7.75 on the Richter scale, considered very intense and damaging.

The institute said that the epicentre was 210 miles north-west of Lima in the Pacific Ocean. The area most affected was the state of Ancash and its fishing port city of Chimbote and the mountain city of Huaraz.

Red Cross officials said that 60 per cent of the buildings in Chimbote were affected. Communications to the most devastated areas were severed and the Government was trying to get information through amateur radio operators.

The Government’s National Disaster Council issued a statement saying that it had

“adopted the measures to bring immediate help to the affected zones.” President Juan Velasco Alvarado said that he would go to Chimbote to see the damage. One of the radio operators said: “Maybe 95 per cent of the houses have been destroyed” in Huaraz. He said that there were several dead, including policemen killed when the city’s police station collapsed. The new Peruvian disaster comes just three months after an earthquake rocked the country’s central jungle region leaving 40,000 homeless, hundreds injured and 10 dead.

An October, 1966, earthquake in Peru killed nearly 200 and left millions of dollars in damage. It is still fresh in Peruvian minds.