SAN JOSE (AFP) — The death toll from Costa Rica's strongest earthquake in decades rose to 18 Saturday, with scores missing and injured, while some 150 stranded tourists were finally rescued, officials said.
"There are 18 dead and 56 missing," Red Cross spokeswoman Lilia Marin told AFP, adding that 91 people were injured in the temblor and 1,378 were being housed in emergency shelters.
Officials had warned the death toll from Thursday's 6.1-magnitude quake was likely to rise when rescue workers reach isolated villages and cars buried by mudslides.
Some 150 stranded tourists, most from the United States, France, Canada and Spain, were finally rescued Friday and Saturday when helicopters accessed remote areas.
Rescuers also reached tourists stranded on mountain passes near the Poas volcano, the epicenter of Thursday's 6.1-magnitude temblor some 30 kilometers (20 miles) northwest of the capital San Jose.
At nightfall around 100 tourists were still stranded in the region around San Jose, including around 50 in the area of Cinchona, one of the worst hit by the temblor and accessible only by helicopter, according to the Red Cross.
Helicopters also evacuated a group of tourists trapped on a parking lot at a hotel near the La Paz waterfalls, a top tourist attraction.
Rescue teams struggled in rain and mist to reach hundreds of people stranded in mountainous central zones, as cracked roads, fallen trees and earth impeded their efforts in the farming region.
Collapsed houses lined the road leading to the epicenter of the quake near the Poas volcano, one of the country's most popular tourist sites.
People were still trapped, some of them apparently dead, inside vehicles buried under quake-triggered landslides, an AFP photographer said.
The National Emergency Board (CNE) declared a red alert in the metropolitan area of the central valley where 2.5 million of the country's four million people live that includes San Jose, Cartago, Alajuela and Heredia.
The quake was felt across Costa Rica, a popular ecotourism and beach holiday destination, and in neighboring Nicaragua.
The strongest quake to shake the country in the last 150 years was followed by more than 1,500 aftershocks, and collapsed homes in and around the capital.
Officials reported meanwhile that the country's leading Cariblanco hydroelectric plant will be out of operation for about a year, after its generators were buried by tons of mud from flooding and landslides unleashed by the earthquake.
The energy provided by Cariblanco will be replaced through conventional thermal power plants using combustible fuel, translating into higher costs, said officials from the Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad, the country's largest electricity company.
Costa Rica's Central American neighbors, as well as Colombia, the United States and China, offered aid to victims.
The US army sent two Blackhawk helicopters, based in Honduras, to help with the operations. The government had contracted most private helicopters in the country, which has no army.
US Ambassador to San Jose Peter Cianchette gave the Costa Rican government 50,000 dollars in emergency assistance funds, the embassy said.
President Oscar Arias called on private companies, church groups and social clubs in Costa Rica "to show their solidarity" with earthquake victims.
"Many Costa Ricans are going through a tough patch," Arias told reporters at the opening Saturday of an emergency aid warehouse at the presidential palace.
"What we most need in this center (the warehouse) is cooking oil and butter, sugar, salt, coffee, sleeping bags and pillows," a presidential spokesman said.
The quake will have an economic aftermath as it wiped out most of the strawberry and flower farms that make up a good part of the country's farm exports -- close to 10 billion dollars a year, mainly to the United States.
"The tragedy will have an impact on exports for several months," Chamber of Commerce President Sergio Navas told reporters.
The government said it was investigating a fire that destroyed a warehouse full of emergency supplies for the earthquake victims that was run by the CNE. Apparently, a spark from a soldering operation set a mattress on fire.
The quake opened at least four new, large fissures -- some nearly 100 meters (yards) long -- on the flanks of the 2,708-meter (8,885-foot) Poas volcano.
Experts said the fissures and new smoke holes that dot the mountain do not denote greater volcanic activity.
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