Colombian earthquake kills thousands

ARMENIA, Colombia - The death toll surpassed 1,000 yesterday from a powerful earthquake that destroyed nearly two-thirds of all the buildings in this western Colombian city.

But as Colombians reeled from the worst tremor to strike this earthquake-prone country in more than a century, citizens cheered in the streets of downtown early yesterday when the Red Cross rescued three men trapped overnight in the rubble of a wrecked four-story building.

Stunned residents in Colombia's coffee belt chose to wait out the night around bonfires rather than venture back into their crumpled homes following the magnitude 6 quake.

The earthquake flattened cities and towns across western Colombia on Monday afternoon, rattling buildings as far away as the capital, Bogota, 140 miles from the epicenter.

Hundreds of the dead lived in Armenia, a city of 220,000 residents where entire neighborhoods were reduced to rubble and left without water or electricity, and where residents say relief has been slow to arrive.

Quindio state ombudsman Piedad Correal spoke of chaos, saying inmates had set fire to Armenia's San Bernardo prison, which was still burning this morning, and would not allow firefighters in.

About 700 inmates in the Pena Blanca jail in nearby Calarca were also staging an uprising, she said.

Capt. Ciro Antonio Guiza, Armenia's deputy fire chief, said rescue workers were so strapped that many bodies remained on the streets uncollected.

Civil defense officials put the preliminary casualty figures at 550 dead and 2,700 injured. However, rescue officials said this was only a partial accounting of the overall toll.

''There are more than 1,000 dead, perhaps more than 2,000 in Armenia alone,'' Armenia's deputy fire chief said.

Hundreds of bodies were trapped in buildings that collapsed, he said. In one 10-story apartment building alone, an estimated 60 people were crushed to death, Guiza said.

Some 700 buildings were destroyed and 180,000 people left homeless in Armenia, Colombian Red Cross official Carlos Gilberto Giraldo told The Associated Press.

Red Cross workers and the government's National Solidarity Network said at least 178 died and more than 1,000 were injured in Calarca and Pereira, capital of neighboring Risaralda province.

The injured were being evacuated by air to Bogota, Medellin and Cali, and by road to nearby Manizales. Without refrigerator trucks to store the hundreds of rotting corpses, epidemics could break out, worried Giraldo.

Iliana Patricia Vega, 26, paced the working-class Brasilia Nueva district in tears, her bright red dress torn, her right shoulder naked to the cool night.

''Oh, my baby, he was so beautiful,'' she said of her 10-year-old son, Jon Alexander.

She was on the second floor with her son and 6-year-old daughter when everything collapsed, killing the boy almost immediately.

''Does anyone have any medicine? Can I get some medicine?'' she cried, fretting over a nasty gash to the little girl's forehead.

Across the street, Pedro Maria Londono, 46, and the rest of his four-member family were miraculously saved when every room but the one they were in was destroyed.

''In 12 seconds, I lost what took 20 years to build,'' Londono said.

Guiza said 60 percent of the city was destroyed. Worst hit were the poor southern districts. Some 340 bodies were collected at a makeshift morgue but many more were expected later in the day, he said.

''There's no way to measure this crisis,'' said Alvaro Patino, Armenia's mayor.