Bodies pile up after quake kills more than 1,000
Bodies wrapped in blankets and plastic bags piled up in morgues today as the death toll mounted following Algeria’s devastating earthquake.
Weary volunteers, their faces caked with cement dust and sweat, climbed huge mounds of smashed concrete to hunt for survivors.
The quake levelled villages east of the capital Algiers on Wednesday night, killing at least 1,092 people and injuring 6,782 more, officials said.
One report said 1,225 people had died as the body count continued. Many thousands more people were homeless.
Police erected roadblocks and stepped up patrols to prevent looting after thousands fled their homes, fearful of aftershocks. Many slept overnight in the streets and in public parks.
Whole families were among the dead after the 6.8 magnitude quake flattened apartment blocks.
Many buildings leaned at crazy angles, domes toppled off mosques and the injured flooded into hospitals.
Exhausted by nearly two days of digging for survivors, rescue workers in Boumerdes, 30 miles east of Algiers, said any hope of finding more people alive under the rubble was starting to fade.
“There is not much hope here,” Saa Sayah, a captain in Algeria’s civil protection unit, said in front of a large, four storey building that had collapsed. “We have already pulled up four bodies, but we can’t get further inside.”
Mustapha Rehaba, 54, gazed sadly at another fallen building.
“I work in a pharmacy, and many of my clients – the elderly, the young – live there. I realised I would never seen them again,” he said.
The quake was the North African nation’s deadliest since a pair of earthquakes west of the capital killed up to 5,000 in October 1980.
In the Bab El Oued neighbourhood, one of the worst hit in Algiers, thousands of people slept in the streets out of fear that aftershocks could bring down unstable buildings. Makeshift tents were set up in parks for women and children.
Balconies had tumbled to the ground and stairwells collapsed on top of one another, but the apartment blocks remained standing in the neighbourhood.
“It was a close call,” said Sadek Bouraoui, a 32-year-old customs officer. “Living here risks the lives of my wife and children, but we have nowhere else to go,” he said as he carried a mattress into the street.
Closer to the epicentre, in Roubia, 13 miles east of the capital, the cries of women mingled with the wail of ambulance sirens.
Whole blocks of buildings were in ruins, with unknown numbers of bodies trapped underneath.
Rescue services were overwhelmed. Women cried the names of their dead or injured children.
Bodies were piled at the town morgue, wrapped in blankets or plastic bags. Machines lifted away the rubble.
“The building shook like a ship. I sheltered with my daughters in a door-frame. That’s why we’re still alive,” said Fatma Ferhani, 70.
In Dergane, near the epicentre, eight members of the same family – including a month-old baby – were killed as they id in a cellar.
Foreign aid groups and governments sprang into action, rushing over rescue workers, doctors and dogs to search for survivors. Food, blankets and medicine for the shocked, injured and homeless were on their way.
In Algiers, electricity was cut in some neighbourhoods and some phone lines were down. The loss of power and scores of aftershocks that rocked the area in the hours after the quake caused panic.
Shocks were felt into the Mediterranean. The quake triggered seven foot waves in Spain’s Balearic islands, 175 miles north of Algiers, that damaged or destroyed 150 boats, officials said.
For Algeria, the quake carried risks of political aftershocks, too.
The government has been battling Islamic insurgents for more than a decade and, with elections due next year, support for President Abdelaziz Bouteflika could slide if efforts to help quake survivors flag.
Muslim fundamentalists have traditionally excelled in helping the needy.
To oversee rescue efforts, Bouteflika cancelled plans to join a summit of world leaders in France next week.
Many Algerians have complained about the wobbly state of buildings and a housing shortage in the oil-rich country.
In one suburb of the capital, residents said it was not uncommon for three families – about 14 people – to cram into a three bedroom apartment. Others sleep in hallways each night.
