PERU EARTHQUAKE

Reports of major earthquakes take on a tragically similar chronology. Day one: massive damage around the epicenter. A death count in the hundreds, but fears that the toll will climb much higher. Day two: the death count rises into the low thousands. Rescue efforts to remote areas are proceeding slowly. Day three...I flew up to Lima from Santiago for Newsweek.
Beyond the destruction along the coast and the immediate death toll rising above 3,000,

The real devistation lay in a valley high in the Andes called the Callejon del Huaylas. It took five days for the first rescue plane (Cuban) to pierce the blinding cloud of dust thrown up by the quake. By that time the dead were being buried and burned.

I and a photographer flew in the next day aboard an army transport. Most of the victims either died outright from falling adobe bricks, or soon after of gangrene. I believe we were the first journalists to arrive (by bush plane) at Yungay, buried in seconds by an avalanche. The only visible signs that lay above the mud were the tops of four palms and the cathedral cross.
The earthquake’s final death toll---somewhere between 50,000 and 70,000.