COLOMBIAN QUAKE'S DEATH TOLL HITS 700.

Byline: Frank Bajak Associated Press 

The confirmed death toll from one of the worst earthquakes to hit Colombia in more than a century reached 700 on Tuesday as survivors anxiously awaited relief supplies and prayed for signs of life under the rubble.

Those hopes were dashed again and again, and officials feared that the final death count would exceed 1,000.

Monday's 6-magnitude earthquake devastated cities and villages across western Colombia, a vast Andean terrain where much of the world's coffee is grown. The temblor shook buildings as far away as the capital, Bogota, 140 miles from the epicenter.

Two small aftershocks hit Armenia on Tuesday afternoon, causing little damage but sending panicked residents running into the rubble-littered streets. There have been about 15 aftershocks.

With many people believed still buried beneath the rubble, mayhem reigned Tuesday in the streets of Armenia, a city of 300,000.

Rescue teams had recovered about 700 bodies in the country Tuesday, and estimated that at least 3,000 were injured - but warned this was only a partial accounting.

Capt. Ciro Antonio Guiza, Armenia's deputy fire chief, said rescue workers were so strapped that many bodies remained on the streets uncollected. ``There are more than 1,000 dead, perhaps more than 2,000 in Armenia alone,'' he said.

Carlos Giraldo, the Colombian Red Cross official in charge of his organization's relief effort, also put the death toll at 1,000.

Two-thirds of Armenia's buildings were rendered uninhabitable. People wandered about desperately looking for relatives. There was no electricity or running water in most of the city, and food was in dangerously short supply. An estimated 180,000 people were left homeless in Armenia alone.

Coffins have become a coveted commodity.

``I've been looking for five coffins for relatives since 8 o'clock this morning and I couldn't find any, so we're going to have to bury them in plastic,'' said 34-year-old Diego Ruiz, who lost his grandmother, a sister and three nieces.

Rescue workers scrambled to evacuate the thousands of injured and to locate survivors. At the city's small airport, ambulances arrived every 15 minutes with more victims, who were airlifted to hospitals in Bogota, Medellin and Cali.

``There is a danger of epidemics, because we have more than 200 bodies and we have no refrigerated trucks,'' said Giraldo of the Red Cross.

Two members of Colombia's professional soccer club Atletico Quindio - Diego Montenegro and Ruben Biurret, both from Argentina - were found dead. Witnesses said the two were holding onto each other in the ruins of a downtown hotel. Another four players are feared dead.

Authorities say they need help, tons of it: tents, food, forklifts, backhoes, antibiotics, generators - and body bags.

Colombians, eager to help, formed long lines at blood banks. The government set up a bank account to receive donations, and more than $640,000 had been deposited.

What was needed, though, was more - maybe hundreds of millions of dollars.

``We're going to need a great deal of international aid because the government by itself does not have enough resources,'' said Piedad Correal Rubiano, the ombudsman of Quindio state, whose capital is Armenia.

Teams of earthquake specialists from the United States, including 64 from Florida's Dade County, and Japan traveled to Colombia to aid the search for survivors. Mexico said Tuesday it would send a 105-man army search team with sniffer dogs and power generators.

First lady Nohra Pastrana went on national television to promise Colombians that relief was on the way. ``We are sending tents, food, help for the children. ... International groups are coming, too, to help us remove the rubble,'' she told the RCN network.

Her husband, President Andres Pastrana, declared western Colombia a disaster area Tuesday and surveyed the devastation. He canceled plans to visit Munich, Germany, to meet with World Bank officials.

In a nationally televised speech Tuesday night, Pastrana promised $12.6 million dollars to rebuild homes.

``This is the moment in which all Colombia will pay back those who for years and with their own hands have collected the coffee beans and generated for us peace, progress and work,'' he said.

President Clinton telephoned the Colombian president Tuesday to express sympathy and condolences.

Despite the massive effort, Colombia's rescue operation appeared to be strained beyond its capacity.

Correal spoke of chaos in much of the affected region. She said inmates had set fires to Armenia's San Bernardo prison, which was still burning Tuesday, and would not allow firefighters in.

Some of the 700 inmates in the Pena Blanca jail in nearby Calarca were also staging an uprising, she said.

Few building were left standing in Calarca, a town just south of Armenia. Workers recovered 106 bodies there by midday. Rubble was strewn down one side of the main avenue, and the silver bell tower of the San Jose church was teetering at a precarious angle.

An additional 38 bodies were recovered in Pereira, the region's largest city. The village of Circasia was wiped out, with an undetermined number of casualties.

Colombia's endemic poverty made the disaster even worse. Buildings made of decaying cement and cinderblock were no match for the might of the quake.

Only the northern section of Armenia, where the wealthy live, was left largely intact. Here, authorities set up headquarters for the relief effort.

Elsewhere in the town, bodies were strewn about amid the rubble. People cried and prayed, hoping that a loved one would be found alive beneath a fallen wall or beam.

Red Cross workers had one small success Tuesday, excavating three men who were trapped on the first floor of a four-story building for more than 13 hours. A crowd in downtown Armenia applauded their effort.

The men were having coffee and saved themselves by ducking between a large safe in a pawn shop and the wall just before the floors above came crashing down on them.

At least nine firefighters were killed when Armenia's three-story fire station fell in on itself. Two dozen officers were also feared killed in the collapse of a police barracks.

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

PHOTO (1 -- color) Carlos Jaramillo sits amid the wreckage of his home in Armenia, Colombia, after it was destroyed by Monday's powerful earthquake.

Javier Galeano/Associated Press

(2) Ricardo Mazalan/Associated Press

A destroyed neighborhood, seen from above, in Armenia, in Colombia's central coffee-growing region.