Rescuers scale back search for survivors
of
Death toll reaches 95
Web posted at:
ATHENS,
Greece (CNN)-- Rescue teams picking through the rubble from Greece's deadly
earthquake say they've heard nothing but silence since Wednesday, when a lone
survivor was found.
The search for survivors has been gradually scaled back,
with most of the emergency teams focusing on a destroyed cleaning products
factory and a nearby apartment complex. As many as 35 people are still thought
to be missing.
Searchers have been working around the clock since the 5.9
magnitude earthquake struck Tuesday afternoon. Many are still optimistic,
inspired by previous quakes where survivors were found after a week or more.
"I hope someone is still there alive. I hope they've
fainted or something," said Grigoris
Angelopoulos, a 34-year-old computer programmer heading a 16-man Red Cross
rescue crew sorting carefully through the remains of a four-story apartment
block in the Athens suburb of Metamorfosi.
Turkish and Swiss rescue teams, among the first to arrive,
prepared to leave on Friday after helping pull more than 100 people from
collapsed buildings.
The Health and Welfare Ministry said 95 people have died in
the quake and they feared the death toll would exceed 100. Officials said 1,600
people had been treated in hospitals, and 380 remained hospitalized.
Thousands homeless
Tent cities are popping up all over
"Some 3,000 tents are on their way and a number of
hotels have temporarily come under state control to shelter the homeless.
Another 7,000 tents are already set up," said Dimitris
Katrivanos, head of the state run Civil Protection
Organization.
Rain storms have added to residents' problems, forcing some
people out of flooded tents after three heavy downpours since Wednesday.
So far, there have been no reports of looting but many
people were reluctant to leave their damaged homes and take up the government's
offer to put them in tents, hotels or aboard cruise ships.
"I won't go anywhere. I have to wait for the engineers
to check my house and then fill out many forms so as to be eligible for state
help," said Argyris Dionysopoulos,
pointing at his cracked house in Liosia.
Engineers painted a red or yellow cross on more than 10,000
homes in the suburbs of Menidi, Liossia,
Metamorphosi and Nea Philadelphia, indicating they were too dangerous
to live in.
A green cross, meaning a house was solid enough to live in,
was painted on about 20 percent of homes inspected in these areas.
The government does not predict more earthquakes in the near
future, but many of
