Carlos Bruce, an opposition lawmaker, said, "In this first emergency of Garcia's government, they started with what they should have done last by sending ministers and the president himself to the emergency zone." Bruce, of the Peru Posible Party, said, "The first thing they should have done is send aid."

While the 8.0 magnitude earthquake shook several cities in Peru, including Lima, the capital, no place was hit harder than this city of adobe homes in southern Peru. Rescue teams who arrived here were shocked to find block after block of modest houses reduced to piles of dirt and rubble.

On Friday, hospitals were overwhelmed and people were still digging out of the rubble as the toll seemed certain to rise. Residents could be seen wandering the dirt streets in a daze, looking for missing relatives. Others rushed to the public health clinic, where they peeked under the black plastic tarps covering corpses.

"We are in the desert here," Marta Rebatta Huaman said on Friday, as she stood above a plot in the crowded cemetery on Friday while waiting to bury her 16-year-old daughter. Huaman said her daughter died while attending a Mass in San Clemento de Pisco Church, which crumbled above some 200 parishioners on Wednesday night.

"I feel today as if my life is ending," the mother, a 43-year-old hairdresser, said.

The priest leading the Mass when the quake struck, Father Jose Torres, was found alive in the rubble on Friday morning, El Comercio, a daily newspaper, reported. Torres was trapped under the adobe roof and managed to remain relatively unhurt while a cave of rubble fell around him, according to Agence-France Presse. It is believed that as many as 50 people died when the church roof and structure collapsed.

Of the 600 prisoners who fled the Tambo de Mora prison in Chincha after the quake, 75 were reported back in custody, with many of those having voluntarily turned themselves in.

The U.S. State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, announced that the Disaster Assistance Office in coordination with the Red Cross will provide $100,000 for food, water, medicine and blankets while the Defense Department will provide another $50,000. The aid will focus primarily on Ica and Chincha, areas also hard hit by the quake.

Pisco shares its name with that of the white grape brandy produced in the area. But after Wednesday's earthquake, with aftershocks still shaking the survivors here, Pisco will acquire wider significance in Peru. "We had 120 bodies prepared for collection just this morning," said Lauro Guzman, 25, a police officer standing watch at the makeshift morgue. "We'll have more tomorrow."