PISCO, Peru -- The death toll rose to 510 on Thursday in the 8.0-magnitude earthquake that devastated cities and hamlets of adobe and brick in Peru's southern desert. Survivors wearing blankets walked like ghosts through the ruins.
Dust-covered bodies were pulled out and laid in rows in the streets or beneath bloodstained sheets at damaged hospitals and morgues. Doctors struggled to help more than 1,500 injured, including hundreds who waited on cots in the open air, fearing that more aftershocks would send the structures crashing down.
"We need everything, even coffins," said Prime Minister Jorge del Castillo, who was accompanying President Alan Garcia on a tour of the damage.
Cities hit
Destruction from the quake, which hit on Wednesday evening, was centered at the oasis city of Ica and the nearby port of Pisco, about 125 miles southeast of the capital, Lima.
Officials said that 80 doctors were sent to Pisco and that authorities were flying injured people to Lima from Ica.
Police were out in force to avert looting, and the government was sending in food, water and gas stoves, as well as eight large electric generators and a Peruvian hospital ship loaded with food and other supplies.
Some foreign tourists were rescued from the Hotel Paracas, 10 miles from Pisco.
The deputy chief of Peru's fire department, Roberto Ognio, presented a report saying the death toll from the quake had risen to 510.
Church collapse
The San Clemente church in the main plaza of the gritty fishing port of Pisco was perhaps the single deadliest spot. Hundreds had gathered inside the church for a special Mass marking the Assumption -- the Catholic belief that the Virgin Mary was taken bodily into heaven after her death -- when the soaring ceiling began to break apart. Worshippers were caught in their pews.
The shaking lasted for an agonizing two minutes, burying at least 200 people, according to the town's mayor, Juan Mendoza. Only two stone columns remained, rising from a giant pile of stone, bricks, wood and dust.
Rescuers pulled out bodies all day Thursday and lined them up on the plaza. One man shouted at the bodies of his wife and two small daughters as they were pulled from the rubble: "Why did you go? Why?"
"The dead are scattered by the dozens on the streets," Mendoza told Lima radio station CPN, sobbing. "We don't have lights, water, communications. Most houses have fallen. Churches, stores, hotels -- everything is destroyed."
The U.S. Geological Survey raised the magnitude of the quake from 7.9 to 8. At least 14 aftershocks of magnitude 5 or greater followed.
Garcia flew by helicopter to Ica, a city of 120,000 where a quarter of the buildings collapsed, and declared a state of emergency. He said flights were reaching Ica to bring aid and take out the injured. Government doctors called off their national strike for higher pay to handle the emergency.
In Washington, President Bush offered condolences and said the administration was studying how best to send help. The U.S. Navy hospital ship Comfort, equipped with a staff of 800 and 12 operating rooms, is in Ecuador and could quickly sail to Peru if asked, U.S. officials said.
Electricity, water and phone service were down in much of southern Peru. Traffic into the area was paralyzed by giant cracks and fallen power lines on the Panamerican Highway. Large boulders also blocked Peru's Central Highway to the Andes mountains.
In Chincha, a small town near Pisco only 25 miles from the quake's epicenter, an AP Television News cameraman counted 30 bodies in a hospital patio.
"Our services are saturated, and half of the hospital has collapsed," Dr. Huber Malma said as he single-handedly attended to dozens of patients.
The quake toppled a wall in Chincha's prison, allowing at least 600 prisoners to flee. Only 29 had been recaptured, a prison official said.
In Lima, only one death was recorded. But the furious two minutes of shaking caused thousands to flee into the streets and sleep in public parks.
"The earth moved differently this time. It made waves and the earth was like jelly," said Antony Falconi, 27, trying to find a bus to take him home.
This report includes material from McClatchy Newspapers.
Quake in Peru
Dead: At least 510
Injured: At least 1,500
Magnitude: 8
Towns hit hardest: Ica, Pisco, Chincha
Tsunami: Scientists expected surges of no more than 1.6 feet to reach Japan.
Previous large quakes in Peru: September 2005, a 7.5-magnitude earthquake rocked Peru's northern jungle, killing four; in 2001, a 7.9-magnitude quake struck near the city of Arequipa, killing 71.
