{"id":24695,"date":"2016-04-18T03:13:37","date_gmt":"2016-04-18T03:13:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/7-8-magnitude-earthquake-devastates-ecuador-233\/"},"modified":"2016-04-18T03:13:23","modified_gmt":"2016-04-18T03:13:23","slug":"7-8-magnitude-earthquake-devastates-ecuador-233","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/7-8-magnitude-earthquake-devastates-ecuador-233\/","title":{"rendered":"7.8-magnitude earthquake devastates Ecuador, 233 dead"},"content":{"rendered":"

{President, on a visit to the Vatican, says that he was returning home immediately.}<\/p>\n

At least 233 people have been killed in the 7.8-magnitude earthquake that struck Ecuador\u2019s Pacific coast, President Rafael Correa said today.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe official figure of the number killed has risen to 233,\u201d Correa said on his Twitter account. Officials had previously put the toll of Saturday\u2019s quake at 77 dead and nearly 600 injured.<\/p>\n

The quake, which struck at 2358 GMT Saturday about 170 kilometers northwest of Quito, lasted about a minute and was felt across Ecuador, northern Peru and southern Colombia.<\/p>\n

Correa said Vice President Jorge Glas was on his way to Portoviejo, a city on the Pacific in an area heavily affected by the quake.<\/p>\n

The quake, which struck at 2358 GMT Saturday about 170 km northwest of Quito, lasted about a minute and was felt across Ecuador, northern Peru and southern Colombia.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, my God, it was the biggest and strongest earthquake I have felt in my whole life. It lasted a long time, and I was feeling dizzy,\u201d said Maria Torres, 60, in the capital Quito, which was rocked by the late Saturday quake. \u201cI couldn\u2019t walk… I wanted to run out into the street, but I couldn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

Glas said early Sunday that the number of confirmed deaths has reached 77, and that more than 588 people were injured.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know that there are citizens trapped under rubble that need to be rescued,\u201d he said in a special TV and radio broadcast.<\/p>\n

Officials declared a state of emergency in the six worst-hit provinces.<\/p>\n

Police, the military and the emergency services \u201care in a state of maximum alert to protect the lives of citizens,\u201d Glas said.<\/p>\n

President Correa, on a visit to the Vatican, wrote on Twitter that he was immediately returning to Ecuador.<\/p>\n

In the Pacific port city of Guayaquil, home to more than two million people, a bridge collapsed, crushing a car beneath it, and residents were picking through the wreckage of houses reduced to heaps of rubble and timber, an AFP photographer reported.<\/p>\n

Ecuador\u2019s Geophysical Office reported \u201cconsiderable\u201d structural damage \u201cin the area near the epicentre as well as points as far away as Guayaquil.\u201d<\/p>\n

The US Geological Survey (USGS) said the 7.8-magnitude shallow quake struck off the northwest shore of Ecuador, just 27 kilometres from the town of Muisne.<\/p>\n

The vice president gave a slightly lower measurement of magnitude 7.6.<\/p>\n

\"View<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

{President, on a visit to the Vatican, says that he was returning home immediately.} At least 233 people have been killed in the 7.8-magnitude earthquake that struck Ecuador\u2019s Pacific coast, President Rafael Correa said today. \u201cThe official figure of the number killed has risen to 233,\u201d Correa said on his Twitter account. Officials had previously […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[101],"byline":[228],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-24695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-internationl","byline-afp"],"bylines":[{"id":228,"name":"AFP","slug":"afp","description":"Agence France-Presse is an international news agency headquartered in Paris. It is the oldest news agency in the world and one of the largest. ","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":71}],"contributors":[{"id":228,"name":"AFP","slug":"afp","description":"Agence France-Presse is an international news agency headquartered in Paris. It is the oldest news agency in the world and one of the largest. ","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":71}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24695"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24695\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24695"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=24695"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=24695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}