Peru 8.0 : U.S. Dispatching Medical Relief

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Earthquake in Peru - August 15, 2007

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update:   The United States said Friday it was dispatching two transport aircraft to help in medical relief work in quake-stricken Peru.

Washington is also liaising with the Red Cross to help purchase food,
water, medicine and blankets for victims, the State Department said.

"We had previously scheduled two C-130s to travel to Peru. The
Department of Defense is accelerating their arrival," State Department
spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters.

"They were going to
be participating in a planned medical assistance exercise," he said,
adding that a US medical surgical team based in Honduras would be sent
to quake-hit areas.

The Department of Defense has provided
50,000 dollars in emergency funds to purchase medical supplies
requested by civil defense authorities, he said.

Aside from
that, some 100,000 dollars had been released from the US Emergency
Disaster Relief Fund to help Peru cope with the disaster, which has had
left at least 500 people dead and many feared trapped in the rubble.

Peruvian Rescue teams scrambled on Friday
to find survivors in the disaster zone of a powerful earthquake that
killed some 500 people and where an aftershock of 6.0 magnitude struck
on Friday, the U.S. Geological Survey and witnesses said.

The
main quake of 8.0 magnitude hit on Wednesday and many of its victims
were poor, killed when their flimsy mud-brick homes collapsed.
Hospitals and morgues were overwhelmed, forcing residents to lay bodies
out on city streets.

Reuters
witness said there were no immediate reports of damages or injuries
from the aftershock, centered around 145 km south of the capital on the
coast.

The aftershock rattled Peruvians on Friday, sowing panic
in the hardest-hit towns, south of the capital Lima, where volunteers
tried to help emergency crews find the living and treat the injured.

Some
510 people have been confirmed dead and 1,000 wounded since the big
quake, the United Nations said on Friday, quoting national and local
authorities.

Thousands of people were homeless and forced to
sleep outside. They complained of a lack of medical attention and
emergency supplies.

The damage was worst in the cities of Canete, Chincha and Pisco.

The rescue of a man from the rubble of a collapsed church brought some hope to search teams in the town of Pisco.

”This
is virtually a miracle, hopefully we can find more,” said Carlos
Cordova Gomez, chief of Peru’s voluntary firefighters, who worked under
floodlights to dig through the church ruins alongside police, soldiers
and volunteers.

”For the time being we’re going to keep on
looking for bodies,” said Felipe Aguilar, directing Army rescue efforts
in the town. ”For us, this is the priority right now, because we’ve
already pulled one person out alive.”

In the square where the
devastated church once stood, hundreds of residents gathered in the
only part of the town of 120,000 with any light after the quake, which
cut electricity and phone lines and cracked major highways.

Pisco,
famous for the grape liquor that bears its name, was worst affected by
the quake along with the towns of Ica and Chincha, where hundreds of
prisoners escaped from a jail when the tremor tore the old building
apart.

President Alan Garcia visited the quake-hit areas on Thursday and sent condolences to the families of the victims.

Wednesday’s
quake was one of the worst natural disasters tohit the South American
country during the last century. In 1970, an earthquake killed an
estimated 50,000 Peruvians in catastrophic avalanches of ice and mud
that buried the town of Yungay.

In downtown Lima, the Peruvian flag flew at half-mast after Garcia declared three days of national mourning.

                                            PISCO,