Ecuador quake toll up, families dig for buried kin

A small crowd of residents in Manta, a popular beach town in the disaster zone on Ecuador’s Pacific coast, clawed away Sunday at big blocks of broken cement and scraps of twisted metal with their bare hands. “My husband is under there,” said Veronica Paladines, a tiny woman tearing at a mound of debris that used to be a hotel and throwing what she could aside, with fury and tears in her eyes. Her 25-year-old spouse, Javier Sangucho, the father of their two young children, worked at the property. 

A massive earthquake of 7.8 magnitude that hit this nation late Saturday toppled buildings along the coast and a ways inland, killing by last count more than 270 people and injuring at least 2,500. 

Leftist President Rafael Correa, who cut short a visit to Italy, surveyed the damage in the coastal province of Manabi on Sunday night. “Ecuador has been hit tremendously hard,” Correa said in a televised address, his voice breaking as he said he feared the death toll would rise from what he called a tragedy. While the full extent of the damage remains unclear, the disaster will likely worsen the OPEC nation’s economic performance this year.