Ecuador earthquake: State of emergency declared after at least 238 killed

The death toll from a powerful earthquake that shook Ecuador's northwestern coast soared to 238 Sunday and hundreds more were wounded, the nation's president said.

Ecuador was in a state of emergency Sunday after the magnitude-7.8 earthquake flattened buildings and ravaged towns Saturday just before 7 p.m. local time (8 p.m. ET).

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"Thank you to the whole world for solidarity," President Rafael Correa said on Twitter.

"Our infinite love to the families of the dead," Correa said on Twitter, while cutting short a trip to Italy to return home.

"The immediate priority is to rescue people in the rubble," he later said. "Everything can be rebuilt, but lives cannot be recovered, and that's what hurts the most."

More than 1,550 people were injured in the quake, according to a statement from the government. At least 370 buildings were destroyed and another 151 buildings and 26 schools were affected by the quake, the statement said.

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Authorities said landslides were making it difficult for emergency workers to reach the towns hardest hit by the earthquake.

"We're trying to do the most we can, but there's almost nothing we can do," said Gabriel Alcivar, mayor of Pedernales, a town of 40,000 near the quake's epicenter, according to The Associated Press.

Alcivar pleaded for authorities to send earth-moving machines and emergency rescue workers as dozens of buildings in the town were flattened, trapping residents among the rubble. He said looting had broken out amid the chaos but authorities were too busy trying to save lives to re-establish order.

"This wasn't just a house that collapsed, it was an entire town," he said.

The country's Geophysics Institute in a bulletin described "considerable damage" in the area of the epicenter and in Guayaquil.

Video posted online showed damage to a shopping mall in Portoviejo and people crowded in the street outside as alarms rang. A hotel in Manta partially collapsed and was left barely standing, and buildings were shaken to the ground in Guayaquil.

"I was in my house watching a movie and everything started to shake. I ran out into the street and now I don't know what's going to happen," Lorena Cazares, 36, a telecommunications worker in Quito, told Reuters.

NOAA's Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said tsunami waves up to 3 feet above tide level were possible for some coastal areas of Ecuador, but later said the threat had largely passed. Ecuadorians who were told to evacuate coastal areas for fear of a tsunami were later told to return home.

A smaller 4.5 magnitude quake was recorded along the coast south of Muisne about a half-hour before the magnitude-7.8 quake struck, the USGS said. At least 135 aftershocks have followed, one as strong as a magnitude-6, and authorities urged residents to brace for even stronger ones in the coming hours and days.

Video posted online showed damage to a shopping mall in Portoviejo and people crowded in the street outside as alarms rang. A hotel in Manta partially collapsed and was left barely standing, and buildings were shaken to the ground in Guayaquil.

"I was in my house watching a movie and everything started to shake. I ran out into the street and now I don't know what's going to happen," Lorena Cazares, 36, a telecommunications worker in Quito, told Reuters.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry offered condolences and said the U.S. was ready to assist Ecuador.

The U.S. State Department said there were no reports of U.S. citizens killed in the quake, while Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said two Canadians were killed.

The earthquake in Ecuador comes just days after the first of a pair of powerful and deadly quakes shook southwestern Japan. At least 41 people were killed in a magnitude-6.5 earthquake Thursday and a magnitude-7.0 earthquake Saturday, national broadcaster NHK reported.

David Rothery, a professor of planetary geosciences at The Open University, northeast of London, says the total energy released by the magnitude-7.8 quake Saturday in Ecuador was "probably about 20 times greater" than the magnitude-7.0 quake in Japan on Saturday.