September 8, 1999
Web posted at: 8:56 a.m. EDT (1256 GMT)

From staff and wire reports

ATHENS, Greece (CNN) -- In a scene reminiscent of the recent earthquake in Turkey, rescue teams on Wednesday frantically dug under collapsed buildings, trying to free pinned survivors following the strongest quake to hit Athens in nearly a century.

At least 52 people were reported dead, scores are believed trapped in the rubble of the quake, and hundreds were reported injured.

Much of the damage was located in the city's northern sector. A domestic utensil factory collapsed in that section, burying an estimated 45 people. News video of the area showed walls sheared away, leaving some offices eerily intact.

Only a few weeks ago, some of the rescue teams now aiding in the Athens quake were at work in Turkey.

Rescuers labored through the night to cut through mountains of broken concrete slabs, hoping to find the scores of people believed trapped by the 5.9-magnitude quake, which struck the Greek capital on Tuesday.

Digging with jackhammers, cranes and even garden tools, the emergency crews sifted through piles of rubble while search dogs sniffed for trapped survivors.

"Only a fraction of those people have been pulled to safety so far," journalist John Psaropoulos said.

More than 100 buildings collapsed, from apartment blocks to factories, most of them in working-class and immigrant areas north of Athens, where construction standards were apparently lower, or contractors used shortcuts, some officials suggested.

The 10-second quake struck just before 3 p.m. local time (1200 GMT) and was centered about 12 miles (20 kilometers) northwest of Athens.

Thousands of frightened Athenians ran from swaying buildings into the streets, where chunks of concrete, glass and metal rained down from damaged buildings.

Several children were injured in a damaged kindergarten and taken to the hospital. None of the children was killed.

Many more buildings in a heavily populated area of older apartment buildings were damaged.

"The emergency crews are still digging through the collapsed buildings that have been reported," Psaropolous said. "But again it is very hard to talk about any number of injured or killed because ... they are obviously going to be working into the night. So there is no fixed figure on casualties."

The epicenter appeared to be located between the working-class suburb of Menidi and Mount Parnes, which is a national park and sparsely inhabited.

The quake also knocked out electricity and triggered traffic jams when traffic lights stopped working. Phone lines were clogged by people trying to locate friends and relatives.

Cracks were reported in buildings in the historic district of Plaka at the foot of the Acropolis, but there was no word on any damage to the historic ruins of the Greek capital.

"We had a very strong shock," said George Skordilis, a seismologist with the Athens Seismological Institute. "There has been aftershock activity but we can't make any forecasts."

On August 17, a magnitude 7.4 earthquake hit neighboring Turkey, killing more than 15,000 people.

There was no clear connection with the Turkish quake, Skordilis said, but "we can say there is increased earthquake activity in the eastern Mediterranean."

Turkey, touched by Greece's liberal aid after its own disaster, which helped ease some of the tension between the two countries, offered condolences and whatever help it could give.

"I wish to express the deep sorrow the Turkish people feel at the earthquake that took place today in Greece," President Suleyman Demirel said in a statement.

"We profoundly feel and share the pain you have from the loss of life and property in today's earthquake because of the earthquake disaster we recently experienced," he said.

Foreign Minister Ismail Cem offered to give any help that was needed to deal with the impact of the quake, a ministry official said.

Greek scientists told local media the quake was the strongest to hit Greece since 1981, when it was rocked by a tremor with a magnitude of 6.6.

Correspondent Nic Robertson, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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