National Post (National Edition)
DEADLY QUAKE HITS MEXICO ON A DARK ANNIVERSARY
MAGNITUDE 7.1 EARTHQUAKE STRIKES Residents of Mexico City dig through rubble to save a neighbour after an earthquake struck Tuesday. The quake occurred 32 years to the day that a temblor with an 8.0 magnitude killed 5,000 people — and hours after annual s
MEXICO CITY • A magnitude 7.1 earthquake stunned central Mexico on Tuesday, as buildings collapsed into dust.
Thousands fled into the streets in panic, and many stayed to help rescue those trapped. The death toll expected to be in the hundreds.
The quake came less than two weeks after another quake left 90 dead in the country’s south, and it occurred 32 years to the day after an 8.0-magnitude quake killed 5,000 people — and hours after annual safety drills held on the anniversary.
The disaster closed the airport, stopped the metro and ended trading on the Mexican stock exchange.
Dozens of buildings collapsed into mounds of rubble or were severely damaged in densely populated parts of Mexico City and nearby states.
Authorities have reported at least 119 dead. Officials said at least 30 had died in the capital, 54 in Morelos to the south, 26 more in Puebla state, and at least nine in the State of Mexico, which borders the capital.
Rescuers rushed to the sites of damaged or collapsed buildings in the capital, and reporters saw onlookers cheer as a woman was pulled from the rubble.
Mariana Morales, 26, was one of many who spontaneously participated in rescue efforts. Her hands were still dusty from having joined a rescue brigade to clear rubble from a building that fell in a cloud of dust before her eyes.
Morales said she was in a taxi when the quake struck. She got out and sat on a sidewalk to try to recover from the scare. Then, just a few yards away, the three-storey building collapsed.
A dust-covered Carlos Mendoza, 30, said he and other volunteers had been able to pull two people alive from the ruins of a collapsed apartment building in three hours of effort.
“We saw this and came to help,” he said. “It’s ugly, very ugly.”
Alma Gonzalez was in her fourth floor apartment in the Roma neighbourhood when the quake collapsed the ground floor of her building, leaving her no way out — until neighbours set up a ladder on their roof and helped her slide out a window.
Gala Dluzhynska was taking a class with 11 other women on the second floor of a building on the trendy Alvaro Obregon street when the quake struck and window and ceiling panels fell.
She said she fell in the stairs and people began to walk over her, before someone finally pulled her up.
“There were no stairs anymore. There were rocks,” she said.
The quake caused buildings to sway in Mexico City and sent people throughout the city fleeing from homes and offices, and many people remained in the streets for hours, fearful of returning to the structures.
Alarms blared and traffic stopped around the Angel of Independence monument on the iconic Reforma Avenue.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the magnitude 7.1 hit at 2:15 p.m. EDT and it was centred near the Puebla state town of Raboso, about 123 km southeast of Mexico City.
The new quake appears to be unrelated to the magnitude 8.1 temblor that hit Sept. 7 off Mexico’s southern coast and which also was felt strongly in the capital.
U.S. Geological Survey seismologist Paul Earle noted that the epicentres of the two quakes are 650 km apart and most aftershocks are within 100 km.