Quake Kills Hundreds in Algeria, Injures More Than 5000

May 22, 2003

ALGIERS, Algeria  — The most devastating earthquake (search) to hit Algeria (search) in two decades struck east of the capital Wednesday night, killing at least 600 people and injuring more than 5,000.

Rescuers feared whole families were buried in the rubble as apartment building walls collapsed, trees crushed cars and weeping survivors walked amid debris. Hospitals were swamped with the injured.

"This is a misfortune that has struck the Algerian people," Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia said on television.

The Algerian ambassador to France, Mohammed Ghoualmi, said in an interview with France-Inter radio that at least 600 people had died, and 5,000 people were injured, and said the numbers could rise further.

"Unfortunately, we have to expect very high figures," he said. "The toll could be revised up."

Earlier in the day, the Interior Ministry was quoted by the official Algerian news agency APS as saying the death toll was at least 538.

French TV footage showed helmeted rescue workers digging furiously through the wreckage of apartment houses and homes in a desperate search for survivors. One man said he saw panicked people jumping from a hotel window.

The quake was deadliest in towns in the vicinity of Thenia, near the quake epicenter. Thenia is about 40 miles east of Algiers, the capital of this North African nation.

The quake hit about 7:45 p.m., cutting electricity in some neighborhoods of Algiers and causing panic throughout the city. About 10 aftershocks rippled through the area in the hours that followed.

The U.S. Geological Survey (search), which monitors quakes around the world, said the temblor had a preliminary magnitude of 6.7. Algerian officials put it much lower at 5.2. The cause of the discrepancy was not immediately clear.

USGS officials said it was the strongest earthquake to hit the North African nation since a pair of quakes hit the northwestern city of Al Asnam in October 1980, killing some 2,500 people. Several quakes have hit Algeria since, but none with a death toll as high as Wednesday's disaster.

The hardest hit towns were near the epicenter, east of the capital.

Numerous towns throughout the Boumerdes district were devastated by the quake, and residents of the region were swarming to area hospitals, with injuries or to seek news of loved ones. Dozens of bodies were laid out, their families weeping over them.

In Algiers, several building collapsed, reducing homes to piles of rubble mixed with kitchen utilities, clothing or a bicycle.

People thronged the streets, preferring to be outdoors for fear of another temblor.

"I saw the earth tremble. I saw people jump from the window of the hotel," Icham Mouiss of Boumerdes told French television station LCI.

Interior Minister Nouredine Yazid Zerhouni traveled to Thenia and Boumerdes. A call for blood donors was issued and medical personnel and employees of Sonelgaz, the state company that supplies electricity, were asked to pitch in and help.

Algerian Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia visited the injured in a hospital in the quake zone and greeted the dozens of victims who lied on the grass outside the building.

"Unfortunately we have not finished establishing these increasingly tragic figures," he told reporters outside the hospital. "What is worrying is that there are still many under the rubble."

France will send two rescue teams of 60 members each to help with the disaster, and officials were in contact with Algeria to see what additional help will be needed, an official at France's presidency said.

Germany also sent rescue experts, search dogs and special recovery equipment. Hundreds of Algerian Red Crescent staff and volunteers administered first aid to the injured and transported them to hospitals.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies was sending a team. Authorities said they feared that the earthquake has damaged health facilities and the water and sanitation infrastructure.

President Jacques Chirac sent his condolences Thursday to Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika.

A hospital in the town of Baghlia was seriously damaged by the quake and numerous roofs in towns around the epicenter caved in, the Interior Ministry said.

Chinese citizens were among victims of Algeria's devastating earthquake, with six trapped under rubble and another seven injured, China's Foreign Ministry said Thursday.

In Algiers, cracks appeared in a number of buildings. LCI aired footage of a stairwell in one building that had crumbled to the ground. People thronged the streets, afraid to enter their buildings. Some schools were opened to take in people whose homes were unsafe.

Butch Kinerney, spokesman for the U.S. Geological Survey, called it a shallow earthquake that was capable of causing "significant damage and injuries."

The earthquake was the largest in Algeria since the magnitude-7.1 El Asnam quake that struck Oct. 10, 1980, said Lucy Jones, scientist in charge of the U.S. Geological Survey office in Pasadena, Calif.

Jones said Wednesday's quake likely occurred on a blind-thrust fault along the boundary between the African and Eurasian plates. Blind-thrust faults produce earthquakes when one block pushes upward over another, as if moving up a ramp.

The earthquake was the latest tragedy to visit this North African nation where an Islamic insurgency that has left some 120,000 people dead has raged for more than a decade.

In November 2001, more than 700 people were killed in flooding around the capital, with most of the deaths in Bab el-Oued.

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