Algeria’s death toll passes 2,000 mark: Building industry blamed for loss
ALGIERS, May 25: Hope of finding more survivors from Algeria’s killer earthquake was all but lost on early Sunday, three days after the disaster claimed at least 2,000 lives in the country’s densely populated north.
More than 85 hours after the calamity, attention focused more on the plight of the newly homeless, the risk of disease and the seething public rage over the heavy loss of life, widely blamed on corruption in the building industry.
Protesters in Boumerdes, where more than half of the deaths occurred, mounted an extraordinary show of defiance during a visit by President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, chasing him out of town under a hail of insults and projectiles scrabbled from the rubble.
Bouteflika’s visit was seen as a callous bid to make political hay of the tragedy as presidential elections approach in less than a year, and awakened an undercurrent of discontent over enduring socio-economic problems facing the north African country.
The liberal press pulled no punches in reporting the incident, some even calling on Bouteflika to resign and reminding him that when he campaigned for election in 1999 he had promised to “go home” when his services were no longer wanted.
Meanwhile the official death toll stood at 2,047 early Sunday, with hundreds still unaccounted for, and looked set to exceed the high mark of 1980, when a massive earthquake in the northwestern Chlef area killed some 3,000 people.
That disaster led to a stiffer building code, but its rules have been manifestly bent or ignored by unscrupulous developers using shoddy construction materials and methods, critics have said.
In addition, many of the collapses occurred in unstable areas legally off-limits to builders.
Meanwhile, aftershocks continue to shake the region, with one reaching 4.1 on the Richter scale on Saturday, raising fears of further collapses of buildings weakened by the main quake on Wednesday.
Hundreds of people have abandoned their homes, demanding emergency lodging from the government to no avail.
Head of government Ahmed Ouyahia on Saturday acknowledged the possible hand of corruption in the building collapses, promising technical studies and legal action, adding that more stringent earthquake-proofing norms may be set.
State radio warned that the risk of epidemics was increasing with the already baking
temperatures of late spring, though Algiers was cooler on Sunday morning with an overcast sky.—AFP
