Aftershocks Hinder Quake Rescue

El Salvador President Francisco Flores has asked Colombia for 3,000 coffins and has appealed to the world for emergency aid following the worst earthquake to hit the country in 14 years.

More than 250 people are known dead, and at least 1,200 are still missing.

Terrifying aftershocks forced rescuers to scale back digging in the Las Colinas neighborhood of San Salvador, which was buried by dirt that came crashing down from a mountainside on Saturday morning in the magnitude-7.6 quake.

"We still don't know anything," said Gladis de Carman, searching for her missing daughter and crying as she spoke on a mobile phone to her mother. "And now the ground is shaking again under us."

The United States has already answered the urgent appeal for aid in El Salvador. Early Sunday the quick response team from Miami-Dade Fire Rescue in Florida - a group of veterans of numerous earthquakes - packed up its gear, bound for Santa Tecla.

The quake was centered 60 miles southwest of the coast, but the worst of the damage was felt just outside the Central American nation's capital.

Body-hunting dogs, sent in from the United States and Mexico, sniffed for the living and the dead under the blinding sun at Las Colinas before the new quakes caused bulldozers to retreat and soldiers to seek safer spots.

AP

Residents blame development for allowing the destruction to be as bad as it was.

Makeshift morgues hold the bodies of dozens who didn't escape, with pick-up trucks the only way to transport them, reports CBS News Correspondent Bobbi Harley.

Even the hospital in Santa Tecla is so badly damaged that patients must be treated outside. Many others only feel safe outdoors after more than 200 aftershocks have rocked the area in the day and a half since the deadly earthquake hit.

Rescue workers don't even know how widespread the damage is. Mudslides have blocked the main highway, new but reports continue to arrive of destroyed villages outside the metropolitan area.

Electrical power is down most of the time as are the phone lines, which are further aggravating recovery efforts.

Saturday's quake off El Salvador's coast was felt from northern Panama to central Mexico — a distance of more than 1,100 miles. Mid-Sunday's aftershocks were below magnitude-4, but centered withi a few miles of the capital, according to local seismologists.

At least 158 bodies had been pulled from the Las Colinas neighborhood near San Salvador by Sunday afternoon, said Dr. Mario Afredo Hernandez of the coroner's office, the Institute of Legal Medicine.

He said about half had not been identified, and those were being buried in common graves because there was no place to keep them.

The National Emergency Committee reported 193 dead, 350 injured and 1,000 missing nationwide. But the coroner's count of the dead from Las Colinas alone would increase the committee's number by about 90.

National Police earlier counted 234 dead nationally, 2,000 injured, 4,692 houses destroyed and 16,148 damaged. Eighty-seven churches were damaged as well — including the ruined Our Lady of Guadalupe Church overlooking Las Colinas.

"We will need to do some crying today, and there will be time for that. But we all need to understand how lucky we have been," the Rev. Peter Danaher of New Jersey, told somber, red-eyed parishioners worshipping before the rubble of brick and stone that had been their church.

The only surviving wall behind Danaher displayed a cross in a stained-glass window and an icon of the Virgin. The sound of hymns drifted a few hundred yards (meters) down the ravine to rescuers digging in Las Colinas.

"I am not worried about rebuilding the church. That can be done in five months or five years, it doesn't matter," Danaher said. "That is a question of brick and concrete. Ours is a question of lives and human spirit."

Only three survivors had been recovered from Las Colinas. Hundreds of people worked without sleep to hunt for more, many using only shovels, even bare hands.

"It is very dangerous here, but we are going to keep hunting. We are going to take them out alive or dead," said Juan Sanchez, a rescue worker.

Fearful of the aftershocks that reached magnitude-4.6, many residents of San Salvador slept in the streets or cars overnight, tablecloths or curtains covering windows for privacy.

The nation's main airport reopened Sunday afternoon after being closed for more than a day. That eased the way for more relief.

Pope John Paul II on Sunday urged international assistance for the nation of 6 million.

Mexico was first to send substantial help: five planeloads of food, medicine and 150 specialists. The United States followed with rescue crews and supplies.

Offers of assistance came from Germany, Spain, Taiwan, Britain, Panama, even Guatemala, which itself suffered six deaths in the quake.

Guatemala was supplying 40 percent of the electricity used by El Salvador's quake-crippled power grid, up from less than 10 percent.

Police said seven people died in San Miguel, 70 miles southeast of the capital, five of them when a hillside collapsed on coffee-pickers. A prematurely born infant died when the loss of power cut hospital respirators.

On Sunday, scores of patients doze on gurneys and mattresses beneath tarps and palm trees before the quake-damaged hospital.

Mayor Jose Perez said 95 percent of the houses were badly damaged in Comasagua, 17 miles west of the capital, and he said four people died.

The Red Cross said 13 people died in Sosonati west of the capital and 10 were killed when a landslide buried a bus on a highway east of San Salvador.

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