ROUIBA, Algeria, 23 May 2003 — It was a scene from hell: after a massive quake tore through the earth, the desperate cries of women mingled with the harsh wail of ambulance sirens. Blocks of buildings lay in ruin.
Countless bodies were trapped under the wreckage.
“The women screamed, the children yelled, people cried, ‘Allah-o-Akbar!’” said Hakim Derradji in Rouiba, near the epicenter of an earthquake in Algeria that killed over 1,000. “It was horrible, it was like we had been bombed.”
The scene in Rouiba was repeated across the quake zone east of Algiers, ravaged Wednesday night by the worst temblor to hit the country in more than 20 years.
Yesterday, rescue workers rushed to pull survivors from the rubble and country after country dispatched personnel, goods and sniffer dogs to the North African nation.
Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Fahd and Crown Prince Abdullah, deputy premier and commander of the National Guard, expressed shock.
“We are deeply shocked and we present our sincere condolences to you and the families of the victims and all the brotherly Algerian people,” the Saudi leaders said in a message to Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika. The 6.8-magnitude quake crumbled apartment houses, knocked down walls and toppled trees. Weeping survivors wandered stunned amid the destruction, and the injured clogged hospitals.
Officials warned that with so many bodies probably buried in collapsed buildings, the death toll was certain to increase. “Unfortunately we have not finished establishing these increasingly tragic figures,” Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia told reporters in the quake zone. “What is worrying is that there are still many under the rubble.”
The Interior Ministry put the toll at 1,092 dead and 6,782 injured, the official APS news agency reported. The Wednesday night quake was the most devastating earthquake to hit Algeria since a pair of temblors west of the capital killed 2,500 in October 1980.
The quake hit about 7:45 p.m., wreaking the worst damage in towns near Thenia, close to the quake epicenter. Thenia is about 60 km (40 miles) east of Algiers, the capital.
In Algiers, electricity was cut in some neighborhoods, causing panic throughout the city. About 10 aftershocks rippled through the area in the hours that followed, and many people spent the night outdoors in fear of further quakes.
The city, however, was mostly spared from the devastation further east, and by yesterday afternoon nerves had calmed — but the memories were terrifyingly fresh.
“It was a great shock,” said Mohcine Douali, who lives in the center of Algiers. “I ran out to the street with my wife and my two daughters, and no one has been able to sleep because of the aftershocks.”
Numerous towns throughout the Boumerdes district east of Algiers were devastated, 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 Dergane, eight members of the same family — including a month-old baby — were killed as they sought shelter in their cellar.
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.
Algerians living abroad were desperate for news about their families. Dozens crowded around a ticket counter at Paris’ Orly Airport, hoping for a ticket home.
“The whole city center has been razed to the ground,” said M’Hamed Harkane, a 34-year-old male nurse from Thenia. “I have my father, my mother and my brother there. I don’t know if they’re dead — they probably are.”
