PEDERNALES, Ecuador (AP) — Rescuers pulled survivors from rubble yesterday after the strongest earthquake to hit Ecuador in decades flattened buildings and buckled highways along its Pacific coast. Officials said the quake killed at least 246 people and injured more than 2,500.

The 7.8-magnitude quake, the strongest to hit the country since 1979, was centred on Ecuador’s sparsely populated fishing ports and tourist beaches, 105 miles (170 kilometres) north-west of Quito, the capital.

Vice-President Jorge Glas said at a somber news conference that the death toll was likely to rise. Much of the damage occurred in the cities of Manta, Portoviejo and Guayaquil — all several hundred kilometres (miles) from the centre of the quake, which struck shortly after nightfall Saturday.

In Pedernales, a town of 40,000 near the quake’s epicentre, dozens of frightened residents prepared to sleep in the streets for a second-straight night as power cables were strewn across streets with no prospect of electricity being restored soon.

President Rafael Correa, who cut short a trip to Rome to oversee relief efforts, declared a national emergency and urged Ecuadoreans to stay strong.

“Everything can be rebuilt, but what can’t be rebuilt are human lives, and that’s the most painful,” he said in a telephone call to State TV before departing Rome for Manta.

More than 14,000 police and soldiers were sent to towns near the epicentre.

Searchers scrambled through ruins in the provincial capital Portoviejo, digging with their hands trying to find survivors. As officials set up shelters and field hospitals, residents said they felt like the entire town had been flattened.

More than 3,000 packages of food and nearly 8,000 sleeping kits were being delivered. Electricity mostly remained out in Manabi province, the hardest hit region, as authorities focused on finding survivors.

“Compatriots: Unity, strength and prayer,” the vice-president told a throng of people in Manta as he instructed them on how to look for survivors. “We need to be quiet so we can hear. We can’t use heavy machinery because it can be very tragic for those who are injured.”

On social media, Ecuadorians celebrated a video of a baby girl being pulled from beneath a collapsed home in Manta.

But the prospect of another night in the streets grew more worrisome for many people after authorities announced that 180 prisoners from a jail near Portoviejo escaped amid the tumult after the quake.

Shanty towns and cheaply constructed brick and concrete homes were reduced to rubble along the quake’s path. In the coastal town of La Esmeralda, authorities estimated than 90 per cent of homes had damage, while in Guayaquil a shopping centre’s roof fell down and a collapsed highway overpass crushed a car. In Manta the airport closed after the control tower collapsed, injuring an air traffic control worker and a security guard.

In the capital, Quito, terrified people fled into the streets as the quake shook buildings. One resident shot a video of his lamps and hanging house plants swinging wildly for more than 30 seconds as the building rocked back and forth. The quake knocked out electricity in several neighbourhoods and a few homes collapsed, but after a few hours power was being restored.

Ecuador’s ally, Venezuela, and neighbouring Colombia, where the quake was also felt, organised airlifts of humanitarian aid. The European Union, Spain, Peru and Mexico also pledged aid, while Pope Francis asked the world’s Roman Catholics to pray for victims.

The US Geological Survey originally put the quake at a magnitude of 7.4 then raised it to 7.8. It had a depth of 19 kilometres (12 miles). More than 135 aftershocks followed, one as strong as 5.6 in magnitude, and authorities urged residents to brace for even stronger ones in the coming hours and days.

The quake was about six times as strong as the most powerful of the two deadly earthquakes in the southern Japan days before. A 6.5-magnitude earthquake struck Thursday near Kumamoto, followed by a 7.0-magnitude earthquake just 28 hours later. Those quakes killed 41 people and injured about 1,500, flattening houses and triggering major landslides.