Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, June 1, 1990 TAG: 9006010013
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
In Peru, at least 135 people died when an earthquake measuring 6.3 on the Richter scale struck the area about 400 miles north of Lima late Tuesday, Civil Defense officials said Thursday.
The government daily La Cronica, however, said more than 200 were killed by the tremor. The differing figures could not immediately be reconciled.
Hundreds of people whose homes were damaged slept on towels and mats in the streets of Rioja and Moyobamba, the two largest towns in the affected area.
Peru's Geophysical Institute in Lima told The Associated Press at least 70 aftershocks had struck since Tuesday night, including one Thursday morning that registered 4.6.
All the tremors were centered around Moyobamba, a farming community of 50,000 that produces corn, rice, coffee and sugar cane.
A strong earthquake rattled Mexico City early Thursday, but apparently caused no serious injury or damage.
The quake registered 6.1 on the Richter scale and struck at 1:35 a.m. (3:35 a.m. EDT), according to the U.S. Geological Survey's National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colo.
The epicenter was about 180 miles southwest of Mexico City or 40 miles west of Acapulco, said Waverly Person, the center's director. The quake lasted about 15 seconds.
Mexico City is in an earthquake-prone region and suffered one of the century's most devastating temblors on Sept. 19, 1985.
That quake, which registered 8.1 on the Richter scale, and an 7.6 aftershock the next day killed about 9,500 people, destroyed more than 400 buildings and left 150,000 people homeless.
An aftershock rocked Romania, Bulgaria and the Soviet republic of Moldavia before dawn Thursday, causing people to flee into the streets a day after a major earthquake killed at least 14 people.
The 3 a.m. aftershock was the strongest of about 100 recorded after Wednesday's quake, which was felt from Moscow to Istanbul and caused serious structural damage to buildings in Romania and Bulgaria, officials said.
Romania's Ministry of Health reported nine people were killed in Wednesday's quake and 994 people injured. A ministry communique on Radio Bucharest said 207 required hospitalization. The temblor also killed one person in Bulgaria and four in southern Moldavia.
There were no reports of casualties Thursday.
The Bulgarian news agency BTA said that, like Wednesday's quake, the aftershock was centered in the Carpathian Mountain region of Vrancea, in northern Romania.
The National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colo., measured Wednesday's quake at 6.5 on the Richter scale and Thursday's aftershock at 5.9.
In Moldavia, which borders Romania, the quake left four people dead and 30 injured but caused little structural damage, the chairman of the national legislature said.
Supreme Soviet Chairman Anatoly Lukyanov said in Moscow that one person died in Moldavia after jumping out a second-floor window, two elderly people died of heart attacks and that another also died from undisclosed injuries, the official Tass news agency reported.
by CNB