ESR CLOSE UP

From the ERRI Watch Center

COLOMBIA (EmergencyNet News) - A powerful earthquake is said to had killed at least 1,000 people and injured hundreds of others. The magnitude 6.0 earthquake flattened cities and towns across western Colombia on Monday, rattling buildings as far away as the capital, Bogota, 140 miles from the epicenter.

Hundreds of the dead lived in Armenia, a city of 220,000 residents where entire neighborhoods were reduced to rubble. The city's deputy fire chief said rescue workers were so strapped that many bodies remained on the street uncollected. Hundreds of bodies were believed to be trapped in 25 buildings that collapsed. In one ten-story apartment building alone, an estimated 60 people were said to be crushed.

The deputy fire chief said 60 percent of the city was destroyed. Colombian Red Cross workers early on Tuesday excavated three men who were trapped on the first floor of a four-story building for more than 13 hours. The men managed to save themselves by ducking between a large safe and the wall in a pawn shop just before the floors above came down on them like a deck of cards.

Landslides -- which had slowed the arrival of rescue equipment and supplies -- were cleared, and convoys of government vehicles with cranes and other heavy equipment converged on the disaster zone. An air force plane shuttled rescue equipment, medical supplies, food and blankets to the region late on Monday.

Armenia's three-story fire station had tumbled in pieces onto its 14 vehicles. At least nine people were killed when the building's concrete floors and pillars came crashing down. Officers were also feared killed in the collapse of a police barracks.

ESR CLOSE UP

From the ERRI Watch Center

COLOMBIA (EmergencyNet News) - After one of the worst natural disasters in Colombia's history, a heavy downpour has slowed the search for earthquake victims. The confirmed death toll from magnitude 6.0 quake in western Colombia reached 700, but officials said on Tuesday the number was sure to rise. Red Cross officials said about 500 bodies had been recovered in the provincial capital of Armenia alone, with many outlying towns yet to be canvassed.

Armenia received the brunt of the quake's fury. Officials have appealed for refrigerated trucks and generators for hospitals to keep bodies from decomposing. Schools and stadiums were turned into makeshift shelters, but there wasn't enough space to house the estimated 180,000 people left homeless. Food and drinking water also were in dangerously short supply. Aid pledges came from around the world, including more than $1 million from the European Union and $10 million from the Inter-American Development Bank. Teams of earthquake specialists from the United States, Japan and France, Russia and Scotland traveled to Colombia to aid the search for survivors. Mexico said it would send an army search team with sniffer dogs and power generators.

A team of search and rescue experts from Scotland left for Colombia on Wednesday to help find any survivors. The International Rescue Corps (IRC), whose volunteers have been called on after earthquakes in Afghanistan, Iran and Japan, said the ten-strong team would join the rescue effort in Armenia. They will arrive in Bogota on Wednesday evening and then be helicoptered to Armenia. The IRC is made up of volunteers, most of whom work for the ambulance, fire and police services in Scotland. The team flying out to Colombia includes experts in thermal imaging equipment, which can pinpoint victims buried deep in rubble, and paramedics.

Armenia's Red Cross chief appealed for tents and tarps to shelter the homeless, many of whom set up makeshift campfires in the streets in front of their homes. More than 2,000 city residents were injured by the quake.

Three hundred police officers arrived from other cities to reinforce overwhelmed Armenia officers who had to retrieve their own dead from a destroyed police station. City officials barred people from entering parts of downtown, fearing that more quakes could down weakened buildings.

Two small aftershocks on Tuesday caused little new damage.

ESR CLOSE UP

From the ERRI Watch Center

COLOMBIA (EmergencyNet News) - Colombia's President Andres Pastrana ordered a military crackdown on the earthquake-torn city of Armenia on Thursday after a day of looting and rioting by survivors of the tremor that killed at least 883 people. Pastrana, who flew into Armenia on Wednesday night vowing to impose order and speed up relief to about 250,000 people left homeless by the quake, said 2,000 soldiers and 700 policeman would be brought in to handle gangs of armed looters still roaming the streets.

Frayed tempers boiled over on Wednesday as survivors, tired of waiting for government aid to arrive, took matters into their own hands, smashing their way into scores of downtown stores and businesses to carry off food and water as well as shoes, jewelry and compact discs. What started as an isolated incident quickly degenerated as crowds of hundreds swelled into thousands in a rampage that engulfed the entire downtown area.

Some residents threw rocks at police, who responded by firing bursts of automatic gunfire into the air. Television news showed similar scenes in the neighboring town of Calarca where nightstick-wielding police made half-hearted attempts to stop scores of people stripping the shelves of a local supermarket bare. The looting continued even as aftershocks rattled the crumbling buildings.

As night fell fearful locals set up well-armed neighborhood vigilante squads to fend off further raids. Armenia's police station was leveled by Monday's quake and with many policemen drafted into the rescue effort they were ill-prepared to confront the small gangs that roamed the streets, disobeying a dusk-to-dawn curfew. The vigilante groups, which gathered on street corners around campfires, were armed with an array of machetes, shotguns, pistols and even Molotov cocktails.

While security officials deplored the violence, they acknowledged that the disturbances were fueled by hunger and desperation. Despite a massive response both in Colombia and abroad to appeals for aid for survivors, virtually none has reached Armenia, where many families spent a third night huddled under improvised shelters in front of their ruined homes.

Government officials were unable to explain why most of the 95 tons of relief aid still remained on the tarmac of Armenia's airport late on Wednesday.

Amid the chaotic scenes on the streets, the slow search for survivors continued. Spirits were briefly lifted early in the day when two teenage boys were pulled alive from the ruins where they had been trapped for more than 40 hours. But rescue workers, who used their bare hands to haul aside the rubble, said the latest figures from the Red Cross -- 883 killed and 3,626 injured -- was low and would go far higher.

LATIN AMERICA AND CARIBBEAN

From the ERRI Watch Center

COLOMBIA (EmergencyNet News) - An uneasy calm returned to the earthquake-torn Colombian city of Armenia early on Saturday after hungry mobs clashed with troops and ransacked stores in search of food and supplies in a third day of frenzied looting. Heavily armed police and soldiers, part of a massive military presence, patrolled the dark rubble-strewn streets that Friday had been the scene of rampaging violence as frustration over chronic food and water shortages turned into chaos.

But despite the strong security, groups of vigilantes armed with rifles, pistols and machetes gathered on several street corners to protect what few belongings they had following Monday's quake, which killed at least 938 people. Earlier in the day, thousands of people tired of waiting in line tore down a chain-link fence and stormed the main Red Cross storage facility to cart off bags of rice, toilet paper and foam mattresses intended for about 250,000 left homeless by the quake.

Moments later, Armenia's city center turned into a battle zone as looters used iron bars and hammers to pry open store shutters and pelted troops with bottles and debris. Troops fired bursts of automatic gunfire over the heads of the crowd, which included elderly women and young children. Although tons of aid has poured into the disaster zone from other parts of the country and abroad, many people complained they had received no assistance since the quake four days ago. Eyewitnesses said at least two people were injured, one with a gunshot wound to the abdomen. At least 120 people have been arrested by authorities.

An additional 1,500 troops have been sent to the city, raising the number of police and soldiers in the city of 280,000 to nearly 6,000. One senior military officier said late on Friday that there was little the security forces could do to subdue people driven to desperation by a bungled relief effort. He said that the army and police cannot hope to control a social problem with guns.

Teams of elite international rescue workers, who arrived in the city two days ago, said they had been ordered to call off the search for possible survivors buried in the tons of debris. Experts said it was possible for people to survive under the rubble for as much as ten days. But nobody has been pulled alive from the gutted buildings in Colombia's quake zone since Wednesday.

DISASTER NEWS

COLOMBIA (EmergencyNet News) - Troops took control of the city of Armenia on Saturday after a spurt of looting by survivors of the earthquake that killed at least 938 people in western Colombia this week. Police and soldiers threw a tight cordon around the city center, restricting the flow of pedestrians, and at least 200 troops brandishing Galil automatic assault rifles were patrolling in the main marketplace, the scene of violent clashes on Friday.

Despite the heavy security presence, about 100 people smashed into quake- damaged stores earlier on Saturday, carrying off sacks of rice, beans and canned tuna as well as electrical goods such as television sets and fans. A squad of about 90 soldiers moved in to arrest several of the thieves, but in contrast to Friday, when angry mobs clashed with security forces in Armenia's center, they did not fire warning shots or tear gas.

Anger at the slow pace of government disaster relief and at shortages of food, water and shelter in the quake's aftermath has sparked frequent flashes of rioting and looting in Armenia, which security forces have struggled to contain. While acknowledging that it was difficult to subdue people driven to acts of desperation through hunger and poverty, security officials said many of the thieves were people from outside the disaster zone. National Police chief Gen. Rosso Jose Serrano said: "If you steal rice, that's understandable, but if you're out robbing television sets or fans, that's got nothing to do with this."