Hope faded yesterday for hundreds of people trapped under collapsed buildings in El Salvador, where aftershocks reached 4.3 on the Richter scale, forcing thousands of people to sleep on improvised beds in the streets outside their homes.
The Salvadoran government requested 3,000 coffins from Colombia, a grim reminder that the death toll, currently estimated at 470 victims, will rise rapidly in the days ahead.
"The chance of finding more survivors at this stage is almost nil", said Ms Claudia Salazar, a fire service inspector, as she observed houses in Las Colinas, on the outskirts of San Salvador.
Five hundred homes were buried there under 10 metres of mud and concrete after last Saturday's earthquake, which registered 7.6 on the Richter scale.
Over 100 bodies have been removed from the rubble in Las Colinas, with a nearby slaughterhouse commandeered as a temporary morgue.
Local officials using helicopters to assess the damage estimated that 20,000 homes and businesses had been damaged or destroyed across the country.
An estimated 600 aftershocks triggered more landslides, which could be identified by billows of orange dust rising from the hillsides around the capital city, San Salvador.
Fifty families were evacuated from a residential neighbourhood eight miles away, as a nearby hill slid slowly toward nearby homes.
Rescue experts from Mexico and Taiwan dug frantically, using sniffer dogs to speed up their work.
The sight of Mr Sergio Moreno (22) emerging from the rubble in Las Colinas neighbourhood, after an anguished 38-hour wait, boosted morale, the joy of his relieved parents contrasting sharply with the general gloom.
El Salvador's parliament declared three days of national mourning, meeting in a hotel as the legislative building was deemed unsafe.
Phone lines, reconnected after the earthquake, were jammed yesterday by anxious callers from abroad. From a country of six million people, an estimated 1.5 million Salvadorans live abroad.
El Salvador's international airport, which closed for 48 hours, reopened yesterday, but rescue flights remained a priority.
Meanwhile, Red Cross officials unpacked blankets and plastic sheeting for temporary shelters, from supplies stored after Hurricane Mitch struck in 1998, leaving 500,000 people homeless in the region.
There was never any doubt that the extra supplies would come in useful some day, in a country battered by earthquakes, hurricanes and war in recent decades.
The Salvadoran government, in partnership with business representatives, established a National Solidarity Commission, which opened a website listing emergency supply requirements. Consulates around the world began collecting blankets, tents, mattresses, food and medicines, while hospitals added clean water and antibiotics to the list.
Patients in Salvadoran hospitals were deposited on the streets yesterday to cope with the growing number of injured, while health authorities warned that the final toll may not reflect the true number of dead as eyewitnesses noted that people buried their deceased relatives beside their homes, failing to contact authorities.
Central America has six serious geological fault lines and 27 active volcanoes. San Salvador was destroyed in a 1906 earthquake, a fate shared by Managua, Nicaragua, in 1972 and nearby Guatemala City in 1976, when 26,000 people died.
Authorities in El Salvador planned a mass burial of unclaimed bodies yesterday as the death toll from the powerful earthquake rose.
Elsewhere in the country dozens of people were reported dead. But with thousands more missing, the death toll was likely to keep rising.