At least 15 dead in earthquakes that hit Ecuador and Peru

The Ecuadorian government said 446 other people were injured. Hundreds of buildings and other facilities, including health centers and bridges, were damaged, and dozens were destroyed. Electricity was cut off, for example, due to torn cables and fallen poles.

The Ecuadorian government said on Sunday that a platform owned by state oil company Petrocuador in the Gulf of Guayaquil had suffered damage. And the government decided to declare a state of emergency for the province of Azuay in the coming hours. The earthquake caused 13 landslides.

According to the Geological Institute (IG) of the South American country, several earthquakes, the strongest of which had a magnitude of 6.8, occurred about 35 kilometers off the coast of Palau Canton in Guayas province. It was felt in several provinces. The earth also trembled in neighboring northern Peru. According to the Peruvian News Agency, the dead man in the Tumbes region was a four-year-old girl who fell on her head from a wall.

Ecuadorian President Guillermo Lasso called for calm and traveled to the hard-hit provinces of El Oro and Azuay, where he visited a hospital and met officials, among other things. A person died in the historic center of Cuenca when the wall of a house fell on his car. Many buildings in Machala collapsed and people were buried.

“I am in shock, everything that happened is still amazing,” the Ecuadorian newspaper El Universo quoted a woman in the city who managed to rescue herself from the rubble with her daughter. An image of a father carrying his young daughter amidst the devastation in Pasaji has gone viral. El Universo was titled “Miracle in the Ruins”.

The entire western coast of the double American continent lies on the so-called Pacific Ring of Fire, which is famous for its high level of seismic activity. A devastating 7.8-magnitude earthquake hit the coast of Ecuador in April 2016, killing more than 570 people and injuring thousands.