More than 200 aftershocks recorded and Spanish Red Cross says as many as 100,000 people may need assistance
The death toll from the 7.8-magnitude earthquake in Ecuador has risen to 350, and many survivors are believed to still be trapped inside collapsed buildings.
The security minister, César Navas, announced the updated toll and said rescuers were continuing to seek more victims and survivors.
More than 200 aftershocks have rattled Ecuador in the 36 hours since Saturday’s quake, some measured as high as magnitude 6.1, according to Ecuador’s Geophysics Institute.
Speaking before the new death toll was announced, Ecuador’s president, Rafael Correa, said an earlier figure of 272 would “surely rise, and in a considerable way”.
Correa said citizens would pull together after the disaster. “The Ecuadorian spirit knows how to move forward, and will know how to overcome these very difficult moments,” he said.
More than 2,500 people were injured in the disaster, which brought down housing blocks and air control towers, buckled bridges and cracked pavements. In the coastal town of Chamanga, authorities estimated than 90% of homes had been damaged.
At least 100 of those killed in the quake were citizens of the regional capital Portoviejo. They included the Quinde family – a mother, father, teenage daughter and toddler son – killed when a four-storey hotel collapsed on their car.
The family were en route to drop off daughter Sayira, 17, for her first term at university, where she had won a scholarship to study medicine. “I never thought my life would be destroyed in a minute,” Sayira’s aunt Johana Estupiñan told Associated Press.
At a girls’ school in Playa Prieta, six members of staff including an Irish nun were killed as the building collapsed. Sister Clare, 33, from Derry city, was a nun in the Home of the Mother order. Her family said they believed she had been trying to lead colleagues out of the school to safety when a stairwell collapsed.
“She was trying to get them down the stairs and the staircase collapsed. We knew she was trapped but information has been slow to come out,” her cousin Emmet Doyle said. “She died as she lived, helping others.”
Two Canadian citizens, mother and son Jennifer and Arthur Flawn from Quebec, were also among the dead, the family confirmed to Canada’s CTV News.
The Spanish Red Cross said as many as 100,000 people may need assistance in holiday towns and fishing villages in the more remote regions near the epicentre of the quake, where citizens have been sleeping outside among the ruins.
The charity said it estimated that 3,000 to 5,000 people needed temporary housing. About 800 volunteers and staff members with the Ecuadorian Red Cross were involved with search and rescue operations and helping provide first aid.
Spain has sent a military plane with 47 search-and-rescue experts and their five dogs to Ecuador, and it is expected to arrive in the city of Guayaquil on Monday afternoon. Other rescue teams have flown in from Mexico and Colombia.
