PORTOVIEJO, Ecuador (AFP) – Rescuers in Ecuador raced to dig out people trapped under the rubble of homes and businesses on Sunday, following a powerful 7.8-magnitude earthquake that killed at least 233.

Vice President Jorge Glas called it the “worst seismic movement we have faced in decades.”

President Rafael Correa said on Twitter that the death toll Sunday had risen to 233, up from an initial count of 77 dead and 600 injured. He added that Glas was on his way to the hard-hit city of Portoviejo on the Pacific coast.

The quake, felt across Ecuador, northern Peru and southern Colombia, struck at 6:58 local time Saturday evening (2358 GMT), lasting for about a minute and was centered approximately 170 kilometers northwest of the capital Quito.

No casualties were reported in Peru or Colombia.

In Portoviejo, the temblor reduced houses to rubble, brought down a local market in a nearby community and left streetlights and debris scattered helter-skelter.

“It was horrible, this is the first time I feel an earthquake like this,” resident Macontos Bibi, 57, told AFP, still in shock a day later. “I thought my house was going to collapse.”

According to Glas, 14,000 security forces, 241 medical staff and two mobile hospitals were being rushed to the most devastated areas, with reinforcements arriving from Colombia and Mexico.

“We know that there are citizens trapped under rubble that need to be rescued,” he said in a special TV and radio broadcast.

In the town of Abdon Calderon near Portoviejo, 73-year-old resident Nelly, who would not give her last name, told AFP in tears that she had rushed into the street after the quake and saw that the covered market had collapsed.

“There was a person trapped who screamed for help, but then the screaming stopped. Oh, it was terrible,” she said.

Maria Torres, 60, who lives in Quito, said the quake lasted so long it made her dizzy.

“I couldn’t walk … I wanted to run out into the street, but I couldn’t.”

In the Pacific port city of Guayaquil, home to more than two million people, a bridge collapsed, crushing a car beneath it, and residents were picking through the wreckage of houses reduced to heaps of rubble, an AFP photographer reported.

At the city’s airport, passengers awaiting flights ran out of the terminals when they felt the ground shake.

“Lights fell down from the ceiling. People were running around in shock,” said Luis Quimis, 30, who was waiting to catch a flight to Quito.

Ecuador’s Geophysical Office reported “considerable” structural damage “in the area near the epicenter as well as points as far away as Guayaquil.”