The bodies still pile up in the town that’s dust and rubble
centre where I work away from here. I threw myself over the children. But thankfully even though the roof and walls were shaking, they didn’t collapse. Everyone was crying and screaming. I thought it was the end.
“Our house is completely gone, but at least my children are safe.”
Yesterday, the death toll across the devastation wreaked by the Pacific Ring of Fire quake and tsunami edged toward 1,700.
More than 700 have already been buried in a mass grave the size of a football pitch to stop disease spreading.
In an area prone to quakes, last Friday’s devastation was made significantly worse due to poor warnings. An official alert drastically underestimated the scale of the 500mph waves.
It is also claimed sirens failed to sound along the coast and there were no warnings from police via loudspeaker vans. An estimated 160,000 homes have been completely destroyed, while 66,000 more are badly damaged.
Thousands of survivors are sheltering in squalid conditions in tents and in 140-plus official shelters crudely cobbled together from tarpaulin and debris.
They are in desperate need of medicine, food, clean water and safe toilet facilities. And the death toll is expected to double.
Red Cross spokesman Antony Balmain, 49, told us: “This is a human tragedy of mind-boggling