Great
Earthquakes In Diverse Places
Spain earthquake: up to 15,000 left homeless
Up to 15,000 people have been left homeless after Spain's most
destructive earthquakes in 50 years killed eight people and
injured dozens.
9:22AM BST 12 May 2011
The Telegraph UK
Thousands of people camped outside overnight in the southeastern
Spanish city of Lorca in fear of further tremors.
Hundreds of people queued for food from emergency workers are they
were left unable to return to their homes damaged by an unusually
strong earthquake.
The mayor of the southern town, Francisco Jodar, said as many as a
third of Lorca's 90,000 residents spent the night outdoors after
Wednesday's 5.3 magnitude earthquake in fear of aftershocks.
A military task force of 200 troops was sent to the area to
provide aid and cordon off dangerous buildings. Part of the front
of a badly damaged church collapsed hours after the quake and
other buildings were considered unstable.
Eight people including one child perished in the deadliest tremors
to hit Spain in more than five decades. Early reports put
fatalities at 10 but this was later revised down.
Another 167 were injured including three in grave condition in
hospital, health officials reported.
Around 15,000 people were homeless in the city of some 90,000
people, said Carla Vera, spokeswoman for the Red Cross in Spain.
She said the organisation had set up more than 800 small foldable
beds in a hangar on the edge of town but that "many people prefer
to sleep outside, near their homes or because they are afraid of
aftershocks".
"We spent the night outside here in the square. The emergency
workers are giving us food and blankets. We're not allowed to go
into our apartment until an engineer comes and looks at our
building," said Edgar Rosales, 38, an Ecuadorian immigrant.
The quake collapsed the fronts of buildings and ripped open walls.
Streets were littered with crumbled buildings, chunks of masonry,
fallen terraces and crumpled cars.
A church clocktower tumbled and smashed into pieces, narrowly
missing a television reporter as he conducted an interview on
Spanish public broadcaster TVE. A bronze bell lay in the rubble.
About 10,000 people were evacuated from the cordoned-off
city-centre. In an outdoor basketball court and children's
playground, dozens of people spent the night on the ground wrapped
in blankets.
One group of four evacuees sat on fold-up chairs in the early
hours, unable to sleep. As they escaped their damaged building
they had seen the corpses of three people outside killed by
falling bricks.
"I was scared to death," said one elderly woman who declined to
give her name.
The stronger tremor, which did most of the damage, struck at
6:47pm (1647 GMT) with a depth of six miles and could be felt as
far away as the capital Madrid. It hit nearly two hours after a
smaller 4.4-magnitude quake.
Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero sent military
emergency units to the region after being told of the disaster.
The damage was concentrated in the towns of Lorca and Totana,
which lie in one of the most active seismic zones of the Iberian
peninsula, but also spread as far as Albacete and Velez-Rubio in
Almeria, the premier's office said..
A total 225 emergency military units deployed to the quake zone
along with another 400 safety workers including rescuers with
search dogs, the interior ministry said.
Police also sent in two specialised trucks with floodlights and
three helicopters including a Superpuma, the ministry said. The
Red Cross moved in 24 ambulances and set up three field hospitals.
A total of 350 ambulances transferred 400 patients out of two of
the town's hospitals, the regional government said.
Residents described confusion in the town of 92,700 inhabitants
about 45 miles southeast of Murcia. Lorca traces its history back
more than 2,000 years and boasts many medieval monuments.
Cristina Selva, 32, said she was playing with her two two-year-old
daughters. "The building moved and I was was very scared for the
girls. I took them and the three of us got under the table to wait
for it to pass," she told El Pais.
"It was the longest 20 seconds of my life."
Francisco Martinez, 61, was watching television on the fourth
floor when the building shook and he fled with his sister. "We
don't know what the damage is because we cannot get in," he said
as he spent the night sitting down outside.
It was the deadliest earthquake in Spain since April 19, 1956 when
a tremor wrecked buildings and killed 11 people in Albolote, a
town in the southern Spanish province of Granada.