Signs of life spur hunt for buried schoolkids

RESCUERS yesterday dug for survivors of the 7.1-magnitude earthquake that killed at least 230 people in Mexico.

Firefighters, police, soldiers and volunteers worked to remove rubble in scenes across Mexico after its second killer quake this month.

The most agonising search was at a school in Mexico City where 21 children, aged seven to 13, and five adults were crushed to death. Many children were still missing.

A day after the quake struck, rescuers working under the gaze of anguished parents found signs of life under the rubble with a thermal scanner.

“They are alive! Alive!” shouted volunteer Enrique Garcia, 37. “Someone hit a wall several times in one place, and in another there was a response to light signals with a lamp,” he said.

“We have been at this since yesterday, but we cannot reach them, because they are trapped between two slabs.”

So far, 11 children and at least one teacher have been rescued from the rubble of the Enrique Rebsamen elementary and middle school.

“No one can possibly imagine the pain I’m in right now,” said one mother, Adriana Fargo, who was standing outside what remained of the school waiting for news of her seven-year-old daughter.

In the Condesa neighbourhood, Karen Guzman sat on a stool in the street with her back to one of the collapsed buildings. She said she could not bear the tension of the search for about 30 people thought to be under the rubble, among them her brother.

Beside her were two street poles tagged with lists of rescued people, but they do not include the name of her brother who worked on the top floor of the four-storey building.

“My mom is looking for him in hospitals because we don’t trust those lists. Sometimes I think nobody knows anything,” she said.

Rescue workers reported that families were getting WhatsApp messages pleading for help from desperate relatives trapped under debris.

President Enrique Pena Nieto visited the hard-hit city of Jojutla in the state of Morelos and appealed for people to help in reconstruction efforts.

The president declared three days’ national mourning.

Residents were preparing to spend a second night in parks and plazas, in tents or makeshift shelters, unable or unwilling to return to their homes as authorities inspected 600 buildings whose walls swayed and cracked from the quake.

The quake hit on the anniversary of a huge quake in 1985 that killed more than 10,000.

Mexico sits atop five tectonic plates, making it vulnerable to earthquakes.

Of the dead, 100 were in Mexico City, 69 in Morelos, 43 in Puebla, 13 in Mexico state, four in Guerrero and one in Oaxaca.

No one can possibly imagine the pain I’m in right now.

MOTHER OF MISSING CHILD