Big Slide

The slide was more than a half a mile wide and 150 feet high when it hit the town, a roaring, lethal gumbo of mud, water and boulders. In minutes it had swept over a whole section of the town, strewed bodies six miles down the road, mounded up in the riverbed and changed the river's course.

This was the first word from an eyewitness of one of Peru's worst disasters. The avalanche had struck the town of Huaras, Peru, in an Andean valley 216 miles northwest of Lima, in the early morning while most of its 9,000 people were still in bed. Five hundred were known to be dead, 1,500 more were injured or missing.

The cause of the avalanche was probably a series of torrential rains. As relief parties headed by Peru's President Manuel Prado Ugarteche started north, an earthquake blocked the highway.

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