Mexicans frantically digging through collapsed buildings
Quake kills at least 230 people and flattens dozens of structures
MEXICO CITY — Rescuers found a surviving child on Wednesday in the ruins of a school that collapsed in Mexico’s magnitude 7.1 earthquake, one of many efforts across the city to try to save people trapped in debris under schools, homes and businesses toppled by the quake that killed at least 230 people.
Helmeted workers laboured throughout the day, sometimes calling for silence to listen for any voices from the wreckage as they tried to reach the girl at the Enrique Rebsamen school in southern Mexico City.
Rescuers spotted the girl and shouted to her to move her hand if she could hear them, and she did, according to Foro TV.
Tuesday’s quake struck on the 32nd anniversary of the 1985 earthquake that killed thousands. Just hours before it hit, people around Mexico had held earthquake drills to mark the date.
One of the most desperate rescue efforts was at the primary and secondary school, where a wing of the threestorey building collapsed into a massive pancake of concrete slabs. Journalists saw rescuers pull at least two small bodies from the rubble, covered in sheets.
Volunteer rescue worker Dr. Pedro Serrano managed to crawl into the crevices of the tottering pile of rubble at the school. He made it into a classroom, but found everyone inside dead.
“We saw some chairs and wooden tables. The next thing we saw was a leg, and then we started to move rubble
and we found a girl and two adults — a woman and a man,” he said. All were dead.
“We can hear small noises, but we don’t know if they’re coming from ... the walls above, or someone below calling for help,” he said.
Neighbourhood volunteers, police and firefighters used trained dogs and their bare hands to search through the school’s ruins. The crowd of anxious parents outside the gates shared reports that two families had received WhatsApp messages from girls trapped inside, but that could not be confirmed.
Rescuers brought in wooden beams to shore up the fallen concrete slabs so they wouldn’t collapse further and crush whatever air spaces remained.
The federal Education Department reported late Tuesday that 25 bodies had been recovered from the school’s wreckage, all but four of them children. It was not clear whether those deaths were included in the overall death toll of 225 reported by the federal civil defence agency. Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto had earlier reported 22 bodies found at the school and said 30 children and eight adults were reported missing.
In a video message released late Tuesday, Pena Nieto urged people to be calm and said authorities were working to restore power and other services to the 40 per cent of Mexico City and 60 per cent of nearby Morelos state that lost electricity. But, he said, “the priority at this moment is to keep rescuing people who are still trapped and to give medical attention to the injured people.”
“Every minute counts to save lives,” the president tweeted.