Army Troops Mobilized to Quell Looting in Peru

By FRANK BAJAK

By Frank Bajak

The Associated Press

PISCO, Peru

The government sent the army Saturday to stop looting fueled by rising desperation in earthquake-shattered Peru, where tens of thousands were without fresh water and shivering families huddled in makeshift shelters at the center of the devastation.

In a soccer stadium in the port city of Pisco, more than 500 people rushed a lone truck that ran out of little packets of crackers, candy and toilet paper, screaming that they had not eaten and accusing rescue workers of keeping supplies for themselves.

As many as 80 percent of the people in quake-hit urban areas may not have access to clean water and many rural communities still have not been reached to be assessed for damage, said Dominic Nutt, part of an emergency assessment team in Peru for the aid agency Save the Children.

“The situation is probably worse than first imagined,” Nutt said.

President Alan Garcia sent 1,000 troops to stop the looting.

“We’re going to establish order, regardless of what it costs,” he said.

Also Saturday, local media reported that a 10-month-old boy had been pulled from the ruins of a collapsed church seven hours after the earthquake leveled Pisco.

“It was a miracle that he had survived so many hours breathing only dust and death,” Romulo Palomino told the state news agency Andina.

Palomino said he was searching frantically through the adobe and wood rubble of the San Clemente church for his parents when he discovered the infant in a pile of broken timbers.

“I thought he was dead,” Palo-mino said. “I picked him up carefully and I noticed that his heart was beating . I cleaned him and he started to sneeze and cry.”

The pews of the church in Pisco were packed for a special Mass when Wednesday’s quake hit and crumbled its domed ceiling.

About 100 congregants were killed , according to Civil Defense estimates. Palomino said his parents were among them.

“Finding this little one alive is a comfort that I will take with me for the rest of my life,” he said.

Palomino brought the infant, whose parents have not been located or identified, to the nearby coastal town of Paracas.

“I’m taking care of him with the little I have, but he needs milk and clothes,” his wife, Ana de Palomino, was quoted as saying on Andina’s Web site. The couple’s house was destroyed in the quake .

Meanwhile, Defense Minister Allan Wagner told The Associated Press in Pisco that the death toll from the magnitude-8 quake had risen to 540, up from the previous figure of 510 provided by firefighters.

Destruction from the quake, which also injured at least 1,500 people, was centered in the cities of Ica and Pisco in Peru’s southern desert, about 125 miles southeast of the capital, Lima.

Garcia said at least 80,000 people were affected .

“We don’t have water. The tents have not arrived,” said Maria Tataja, 38, who shared an open-fronted shelter with nine other people.

Miguel Soto, a police officer standing guard in the Pisco stadium, said food donated by one Lima district had been raided on the traffic-clogged highway to Pisco. Many other food trucks simply weren’t getting through, he said.

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