The dreams, plans and even the lives of hundreds of families were shattered in one moment — 6:58 p.m. on April 16 — when a magnitude 7.8 earthquake rocked the central coast of Ecuador.

Among the desolation and debris lay thousands of abandoned objects, shards of a lost and broken normalcy.

A portrait of two women was tossed amid the rubble on a sidewalk and stained by a tropical downpour. They embrace and smile timidly, the elder of the two crossing her arms delicately. It's not clear if they are mother and daughter. Sisters? Friends? Are they alive, or are they among the more than 650 who died in the quake?

A white dress, adorned with sequins and gold embroidery, hung unmarked and brilliant in a room that now had no walls.

On a devastated street, a sign still welcomed guests to the Texas hotel. Behind it, a multistory building was collapsed, though the lobby itself eerily survived.

"What happened here is terrible. All the effort that it meant to build this hotel with more than 20 rooms ended in this, pure rubble," said Michael Ortiz, who owned the lodging house. Stunningly, no one was killed. "By luck, there weren't any tourists at that moment; they were returning from the beach, and thank God there were very few for that time of the year."

Survivors say the number of victims could have been far higher if the quake had hit during the high season for tourism along the scenic coast.

On what had been an interior wall of a public school, a mutilated mural showed a lake a volcano and a tree labelled "love," all now exposed to the greater world.

Text from the AP news story, AP PHOTOS: Fragments of shattered lives after Ecuador quake by Rodrigo Abd and Dolores Ochoa.

See these images on APImages.com

Follow AP photographers on Twitter: http://twitter.com/AP/lists/ap-photographers

Spotlight is the blog of AP Images, the world’s largest collection of historical and contemporary photos. AP Images provides instant access to AP’s iconic photos and adds new content every minute of every day from every corner of the world, making it an essential source of photos and graphics for professional image buyers and commercial customers.  Whether your needs are for editorial, commercial, or personal use, AP Images has the content and the expert sales team to fulfill your image requirements. Visit apimages.com to learn more.

Written content on this site is not created by the editorial department of AP, unless otherwise noted. 

AP Images on Twitter | AP Images on Facebook | AP Images on Instagram