Atlas Shrugged

Death Toll Hits 450 in Peru Earthquake

Just how devastating was the magnitude-8 earthquake that hit Peru?

Death Toll Has Hit 450

More Than 1,500 Injured

Dust-covered Dead Laid Out in City Streets

Damaged Hospitals and Morgues have Injured Lying on Cots in City Streets w/Dead

Huge Aftershocks, at Least 14 of Magnitude 5.0 or Higher

At Least 200 People Buried Alive in San Clemente Church in the Port of Pisco

The shaking lasted for an agonizing two minutes, burying at least 200 people, according to the town's mayor. On Thursday, only two stone columns rose from a giant pile of stone, bricks, wood and dust.

Rescuers pulled out bodies all day and lined them up on the plaza - at least 60 by late afternoon. Civil defense workers then arrived and zipped them into body bags. But relatives searching desperately for the missing opened the zippers, crying hysterically each time they recognized a familiar face.

Few in the traumatized crowds would talk with journalists. One man shouted at the bodies of his wife and two small daughters as they were pulled from the rubble: "Why did you go? Why?"

No Lights, No Water, No Communications, Most Houses Have Fallen

Prison Wall Toppled Allowing 600 Prisoners To Flee, Only 29 Recaptured So Far

Took Red Cross 7.5 hours to arrive in one city, three times the normal travel time, due to Damaged Roads

Scientists Define Quake as a Megathrust, the Largest Type of Quake on The Planet


If Nothing Else, Just Send A Prayer!

Original Story by JEANNETH VALDIVIESO