Counting the quake damage to Peru's historic sites

LIMA, Peru — Historic churches and colonial-era haciendas along Peru's southern coast suffered serious damage in last month's deadly earthquake.

The quake badly damaged at least 173 churches, monuments and historic buildings, with about one-third completely destroyed, said the director of the state-run National Culture Institute, Cecilia Bakula.

The 329-year-old colonial Hacienda San Jose, outside the city of Chincha, suffered partially collapsed walls but was largely intact, saved by its wooden roof. The hacienda was declared a national monument in the late 1960s.

In the port city of Pisco — hit hardest by the Aug. 15 quake that more than 500 people — the five-story Embassy Hotel accordioned onto its ground floor, killing 15. Other hotels survived intact.

Most buildings were built with unreinforced adobe in Pisco, where 85 percent of the buildings were destroyed.

Karina Moreno, Bakula's spokeswoman, said there have not been any reports of serious damage to pre-Columbian sites as of yet. Officials are taking inventory of some 2,800 pre-Inca monuments there, where burial sites are particularly vulnerable because of the loose desert soil.

The Nazca lines, world-famous desert geoglyphs, suffered no damage, government officials said. (Geoglyphs are large images made on the ground using arrangements of stones or soil.)

Boat trips to an offshore wildlife reserve nearby have begun operating again, after sitting idle at port for three weeks. The launches ferry sightseers to the rugged, guano-coated Ballestas Islands — home to sea lions and myriad bird species, including Humboldt penguins, 165 miles southeast of the capital.

The government agency that oversees the adjacent Paracas National Reserve, says it is still unsafe to visit after the quake shook rocks off coastal bluffs. Most of the arched rock formation in the reserve, known as "The Cathedral," came tumbling down.