VIDEO CNN's Nic Robertson shows the latest rescue efforts. (September 8) Windows Media 28K 80K People speak about their experiences in the quake with CNN's Walter Rodgers. (September 8) Windows Media 28K 80K  ALSO: Turk help in Greek earthquake may bring warmer ties Athens earthquake closes stock exchange Greece to charge substandard builders over quake GALLERY: Scenes from the Athens Quake MESSAGE BOARD: Mediterranean quakes

September 8, 1999
Web posted at: 9:08 p.m. EDT (0108 GMT)

ATHENS, Greece (CNN) -- Rescue teams plucked survivors from flattened apartment blocks and factories across Athens on Wednesday, but dozens of people were still missing in the wake of Tuesday's 5.9-magnitude earthquake.

At least 64 people were killed and more than 2,000 were injured in the quake, fire and health officials said. At least 50 people were still believed buried, 30 of them trapped under a collapsed cleaning products factory.

The Greek Health and Welfare Ministry said at least 12 children died in the quake, including some who were killed when their nursery collapsed.

Officials in Athens declared a one-day state of emergency Wednesday and urged residents to stay out of damaged homes until the buildings could be inspected.

Hundreds of aftershocks -- including a midnight jolt that registered a magnitude of 4.7 -- have kept nerves on edge in the Greek capital. Many residents, fearing their homes could collapse, slept overnight in parks.

A team of 20 Turks was the first international search crew to arrive in the Greek capital on Wednesday, returning the help Greece offered after a much more devastating earthquake ravaged northwestern Turkey last month.

Turks praised Greece for their quick and extensive help after the August 17 quake that claimed more than 15,000 lives. Their teamwork caused political leaders on both sides of the Aegean Sea to reassess their positions. The two nations have nearly gone to war three times in the last 25 years over territorial disputes.

"It is good. This is the second time we meet the Greeks. Now it is our turn," said Iskender Eigeir of Turkey.

Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit said on Wednesday that his nation shared Greece's suffering. "We are determined to do everything possible to ease this pain. We see this as a humane and neighborly duty," he said.

Much of the damage was located in Athens' northern suburbs.

A domestic utensil factory collapsed in that section, burying dozens of people. News video of the area showed walls sheared away, leaving some offices eerily intact.

Rescuers labored through the night to cut through mountains of broken concrete slabs, hoping to find the scores of people believed trapped beneath the rubble.

Digging with jackhammers, cranes and even garden tools, the emergency crews sifted through piles of rubble while search dogs sniffed for trapped survivors.

Relatives of missing factory workers wait close to the site, hoping they will be found

They managed to pull out two survivors -- a man and a woman -- from deep in the debris more than 32 hours after the quake, and another woman was known to be alive in the same area of the rubble. But Fire Chief Panaghiotis Fouras said there were doubts many others would emerge alive.

"Please, tell me everything will be all right," pleaded a man embracing a friend outside the factory, where the man's fiancee was among those pinned under five stories of concrete and steel.

More than 100 buildings collapsed, from apartment blocks to factories, most of them in working-class and immigrant areas north of Athens, where construction standards were apparently lower, or contractors used shortcuts, some officials suggested.

A Greek woman stands in rubble left by the earthquake

"We will look at this with great care," said Interior Minister Vasso Papandreou. "We have some of the strictest earthquake regulations around, and if they were kept, we should not have had this much damage."

There was no apparent damage to ancient sites in central Athens.

Greek scientists said the quake was the strongest to hit Greece since 1981, when a quake with a magnitude of 6.6 struck Loutraki. Greece's deadliest quake in recent times registered a 6.5-magnitude and killed 45 people in the northern port of Thessaloniki in 1978.

Tuesday's earthquake was the strongest to hit the immediate Athens area in nearly a century. A 1914 quake in the region registered a magnitude of 6.

Correspondent Nic Robertson, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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