In Remote Ecuador Towns Hit by Quake, Contact Was Cut Off for Days
By NICHOLAS CASEY and MAGGY AYALA APRIL 19, 2016
EL MATAL, Ecuador — The narrow, six-mile road that connected this fishing village to the main highway disintegrated from the earth’s violent heaves, severing it from all outside contact.
It would be days before anyone arrived.
Residents took to the rubble with shovels and sticks, to little avail. Some used their hands to push away debris from a sandy cliff that had collapsed, smothering all the homes below.
There was no water, no electricity. And with all phone lines severed, there would be no calling for help.
On Tuesday, a military helicopter made the 40-minute flight from the provincial capital, Portoviejo, ferrying supplies and a New York Times reporter and photographer.
“You ask what buildings fell? The question is what building didn’t fall,” said Eduardo Alciva Domínguez, 59, a fisherman who had been heading out to cast nets when the 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck on Saturday evening.
If confirmed, that means the total number of deaths could multiply in the days ahead as rescuers reach remote fishing villages like this one.
The quake basically split the northern plains of this impoverished Andean nation in two.
On one side are towns like Portoviejo that are connected by the main highway. While these towns are battered and broken, emergency workers have descended from around the world to rescue survivors and bury the dead, which have numbered more than 100.
On the other side are dozens of towns and villages where roads were blocked or obliterated by the quake and where no rescue workers initially came. Fewer may be trapped there, but fewer are believed to have survived.
In El Matal, where firefighters arrived on Monday, only two of the missing have been found so far, and both were dead. No one has an overall figure for the missing. READ MORE