Three days of mourning in Peru
Updated on 17 August 2007
At Magnitude 8 on the Richter scale, this quake had no respect for person nor place. The church tower in Pisco's main square is somehow still standing but in the rubble below 200 were crushed to death.
And for the able-bodied, a horrific task: picking through the dead to try and find those still living. Stretchers fashioned from scrap bits of carpet, and then placed on market trolleys.
The priority for survivors is to get them to hospital.
'My mother was buried by a wall. And it fell on my son's back. My mother broke her leg and died. I'm almost destroyed. I've lost my family.'Patricia Canelo, victim
The emergency room in Chincha is now part of the car park. The patients that make it here are desperate.
The president is now comforter in chief but what this country needs is aid; a UN backed assessment expected sometime today.
With up to 70 per cent of this coastal city levelled it is no surprise that people are on the move.
Long into the evening people fled the disaster zone. An untold number are now homeless.
