MONTECRISTI, Ecuador – Ecuadoreans began burying loved ones felled by the country’s deadliest earthquake in decades, while hopes faded that more survivors will be found.
In the small town of Montecristi, near the port city of Manta, two children were among those buried Tuesday. They were killed with their mother while buying school supplies when the magnitude-7.8 quake struck Saturday night.
The funeral had to be held outside under a makeshift awning, because the town’s Roman Catholic church was unsafe from structural damage. Family members wailed loudly and one man fainted as the children were laid to rest in an above-ground vault.
Scenes of mourning multiplied all along Ecuador’s normally placid Pacific coastline, where the tremor flattened towns and killed hundreds. Funeral homes are running out of caskets to accommodate so many casualties, and local governments are paying to bring in caskets from other cities.
The government put the death toll at 507 late Tuesday, but officials expected more bodies to be found, with the Defense Department reporting 231 people still missing. The final toll could surpass casualties from earthquakes in Chile and Peru in the past decade. Among the dead were at least nine foreigners, including an American and two Canadians.