Quito: A strong earthquake shook the coastal area of Ecuador on Saturday, where it left at least 14 dead and 381 injured and damaged dozens of homes, schools, and health centers, in addition to causing the death of a girl in a Peruvian border town, the authorities reported.
The United States Geological Survey said the earthquake had a magnitude of 6.7 and occurred shortly after noon in the Guayas region, with its epicenter about 80 kilometers (50 miles) south of Guayaquil, the second largest city. of Ecuador.
President Guillermo Lasso, at a press conference, said that the number of victims “is something that hurts us a lot, they are the result of the ravages of nature,” after visiting the cities of Machala, the most affected by the seismic movement, and Cuenca, others with various havoc.
He also expressed that he has arranged for the state portfolios to release economic resources to attend to the emergency.
The Risk Management Secretariat reported that 12 people lost their lives in the coastal province of El Oro, whose capital is Machala. He pointed out that in that area, some houses collapsed, a dock was destroyed, and the walls and columns of a bank building cracked, trapping an unknown number of people.
Authorities said the Ecuadorian air force began transferring wounded from Machala to health centers in Guayaquil.
During the afternoon, Lasso asked the population for calm, visited those injured by the earthquake in Machala, and expressed his solidarity with the families of the deceased and the affected people.
Two people died in the Andean province of Azuay, 310 kilometers south of Quito, one of them in Cuenca when the vehicle he was driving down a street was left under rubble when the second floor of a house collapsed in the middle of the colonial center. , according to the secretariat.
In Peru, Prime Minister Alberto Otárola reported that a 4-year-old girl died in a Tumbes region hospital on the border with Ecuador. The minor suffered a brain injury after her house collapsed due to the earthquake in Ecuador and that she also felt in Peru.
The Peruvian civil defense said four houses were uninhabitable in the Tumbes region due to the tremor.
