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SAN JOSE (AFP) – Rescue workers rushed Friday to try to free about 600 people, half of them foreign tourists, trapped when boulders and earth wiped out a mountain road in Costa Rica after a strong earthquake that left at least 14 people dead.
The 6.1 magnitude quake in this Central American country on Thursday near the Poas volcano, a major tourist draw, caused widespread panic and damage.
"Today is a day of mourning for Costa Ricans," President Oscar Arias told a joint news conference with the head of the National Emergency Commission.
Rescue personnel were desperately searching for victims near the Poas volcano outside the capital San Jose, throughout the night and at 4:30 am (1030 GMT) "a patrol confirmed that in the area of Cataratas there were 10 fatalities," Red Cross spokesman Cristian Ana said.
He said the toll could rise as rescue operations were resuming in earnest Friday morning and reaching previously inaccessible areas.
Earlier police and neighbors had found the bodies of two sisters who had been selling sweets when they were hit by a landslide near the epicenter.
Another woman died of a heart attack in Moravia, a San Jose suburb, and a 12-year-old girl was crushed by the wall of her home in Fraijanes, near the volcano, authorities said.
Backed by choppers, hundreds of Red Cross rescue workers, firemen and police worked all night and into Friday trying to open the route up the mountainside, toward about 300 trapped foreign tourists and 300 locals caught in their villages.
The National Emergency Board declared an emergency in the metropolitan area including San Jose, Cartago, Alajuela and Heredia, in the central valley where 2.5 million of the country's four million people live. It also said search helicopters would be ferrying rescued people in need of medical care to valley hospitals.
"These losses of life fill us with pain; our prayers will be for their families," Arias said, noting that "hundreds of families had seen serious damage to their homes."
The president was due to visit the quake zone Friday.
The US Geological Survey (USGS) said the quake measured 6.1 on the moment magnitude scale, revising down an initial figure of 6.2, and struck at a depth of 4.5 kilometers (2.8 miles).
The quake, which hit at 1:21 pm (1921 GMT) some 30 kilometers (20 miles) northwest of the capital, shook water out of swimming pools and witnesses said they had not felt such a strong tremor in 30 years.
It was felt across this Central American country, a popular ecotourism and beach holiday destination, as well as in neighboring Nicaragua to the north.
A spokesman for the Costa Rican Red Cross said two communities near the epicenter, Vara Blanca and Cinchona, had been cut off by serious road damage.
Residents telephoned local radio programs to report injured people needing urgent attention while officials warned of landslides on roads in mountainous areas near the epicenter, where aftershocks continued.
Transport Minister Karla Gonzalez said the government had contracted most private helicopters in the country, which has no army, to help with rescue operations.
The emergency commission declared a red alert in the capital and surrounding areas "where serious damage to infrastructure, roads and homes has been reported and some people were injured and trapped in their houses."
San Jose residents reported broken windows, cracks in buildings, ceilings and roads. Public buildings, including the finance ministry, were evacuated, and many people ran onto the streets.
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