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At least 15 killed in Ecuador, Peru in wake of powerful earthquake

Police and firefighters walk past a crushed vehicle surrounded by bricks and block of concrete.

A strong earthquake shook southern Ecuador and northern Peru on Saturday, killing at least 15 people, trapping others under rubble and sending rescue teams out into streets littered with debris and fallen power lines.

The U.S. Geological Survey reported an earthquake with a magnitude of about 6.8 that was centred just off the Pacific Coast, about 80 kilometres south of Guayaquil, Ecuador’s second-largest city.

One of the victims died in Peru, while 14 others died in Ecuador, where authorities also reported that at least 381 people were injured and dozens of homes, schools and health-care centres were damaged.

Juan Vera lost three relatives when the quake brought down his niece’s home in Machala, Ecuador. The government has offered to pay for the woman’s funeral and those of her baby and her partner, but Vera wonders why local authorities allowed his relatives to live in such an old home to begin with.

“Because of its age, that building should have been demolished already,” Vera said outside the morgue in Machala, where he was waiting for the three bodies to be released.

“I’m sorry, the mayor’s office is the entity that has to regulate these things through its planning departments so that the buildings are in good condition to be rented out or inhabited.”

A police officer and rescue workers look up next to a car crushed by debris after an earthquake shook Cuenca, Ecuador, on Saturday. The U.S. Geological Survey reported an earthquake with a magnitude of 6.8, about 80 kilometres south of Guayaquil. (Xavier Caivinagua/The Associated Press)

The earthquake brought down homes and buildings in vastly different communities, from coastal areas to the highlands. But in Ecuador, regardless of geography, many of the homes that crumbled had a lot in common: They housed the poor, were old and did not meet building standards in the earthquake-prone country.

In Peru, the earthquake was felt from its northern border with Ecuador to the central Pacific coast. Peruvian Prime Minister Alberto Otarola said a four-year-old girl died from head trauma she suffered in the collapse of her home in the Tumbes region, on the border with Ecuador.

One of the victims in Azuay, Ecuador, was a passenger in a vehicle crushed by rubble from a house in the Andean community of Cuenca, according to the Risk Management Secretariat, Ecuador’s emergency response agency.

In El Oro, the agency also reported that several people were trapped under rubble. In Machala, a two-storey home collapsed before…

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