Rescuers lose hope for survivors from Peru quake

PISCO, Peru, Aug 19 (Reuters) Rescuers in Peru lost hope today of finding more survivors of a giant earthquake that struck four days ago, while residents made homeless by the quake huddled around campfires to keep warm.

Wednesday's 8 magnitude quake killed more than 500 people in several towns in the central coast area, most of them crushed when their flimsy mud-brick homes collapsed.

Rescue teams said the structure of the traditional buildings made finding more people alive under the rubble unlikely.

''Here the chances are much, much lower,'' said Pedro Frutos, 46, a Spanish rescue expert whose team once found a survivor 11 days after a quake in Pakistan.

Mud bricks are heavier than modern bricks and do not have holes allowing for steel reinforcement rods to be put in the walls. That means fewer air pockets are left when mud-brick houses cave in.

The earthquake's devastation was felt hardest in the colonial town of Pisco, which lies 250 km south of the capital Lima.

It destroyed about 34,000 homes, 16,000 of them in and around Pisco.

The death toll from the quake stood at 502, but was expected to rise as rescuers continue to pull more bodies from the rubble.

Many of the dead were found lying close to doorways, having nearly escaped before they were trapped under the suffocating debris, rescuers said.

''The way things are constructed here, there's not really any supports on the walls, so things just came down on top of people like pancakes,'' said Daniel Landa, a firefighter from Elko, Nevada, who was helping rescue efforts as a volunteer.

Peruvian President Alan Garcia, who has worked and slept in the disaster zone since soon after the earthquake, said lessons would have to be learned when rebuilding begins.

''We're going to rebuild these houses, but it'll be with solid material,'' he said today.

US President George W Bush expressed solidarity with the Peruvian people in a telephone conversation with Garcia today, White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said in Crawford, Texas, where Bush is on vacation.

REUTERS SBC PM2330