Spaniards flee from quake-hit city after nine die

The small agricultural city in the far south of the country was transformed into a ghost town yesterday as a stream of cars carried many of its 90,000 residents to nearby towns in an effort to avoid any further major aftershocks.

Shops, businesses and schools were closed as the sirens of emergency vehicles filled the air and helicopters hovered overhead.

Lorca was hit with two serious earthquakes in succession at around 5pm on Wednesday, measuring 4.4 and 5.2 on the Richter scale.

Local resident Gines Navarro was forced to wait nervously as firefighters retrieved belongings from his flat so he could join those fleeing the city. One of his neighbours was killed in the earthquakes, and the staircase in his building had collapsed.

“We can’t stay here,” Mr Navarro said, his wife sobbing at his side. “We’re going to stay with relatives.”

Tens of thousands of people spent the night outside in makeshift camps. Many of those who remained in the city were poor Latin American immigrants who work in the fields and had nowhere else to go.

The Spanish Government has promised to set up a shelter to house 3,500 people, but Ecuadorian farm worker Luis Vazquez was among those camping in a supermarket car park with his wife, 12-year-old daughter and four other families.

He said his flat was badly damaged, and that he would soon “have to ask for help if it continues like this”. He added: “I can’t care for my family without money, and now without a house.”

Thirty people remained in hospital yesterday, with an estimated 30,000 residents sleeping in cars and cardboard box shelters.

The earthquakes sent brick building facades and parts of terraces plunging into the streets and caused damage to hundreds of apartment buildings.

“The whole facade and the stairs of the apartment where I live are totally broken,” said resident Tomas Hinojo. “The hardest things happened right where I live. Three of the victims killed are my neighbours.”

The second, larger quake was followed by 37 aftershocks lasting through yesterday morning.

The largest was about half an hour after midnight and measured 3.9 on the Richter scale.

Spanish experts said the second quake caused the most damage, and that its power was more destructive than most quakes of a similar magnitude because its epicentre was on the outskirts of the city and happened at the unusually shallow depth of just one kilometre below ground.

“That is very, very close to the surface,” said Maria Jose Jurado Rodriguez, a geologist with the Spanish National Research Council, the government’s top scientific research group. “That energy goes very directly to the inhabited area.”

Three of those hospitalised remained in a serious condition yesterday, while an additional 260 people were treated for light injuries and shock immediately after the quakes.

The nine people killed in the earthquakes included one young child.