MEXICO IN RUINS
People pulled from collapsed buildings
A man is pulled out of the rubble alive following an earthquake in Mexico City on Tuesday. The powerful 7.1-magnitude midday quake shook the metropolis, causing panic among its 20 million inhabitants and leaving at least 150 people dead on the 32nd anniversary of a devastating 1985 earthquake.
MEXICO CITY •A magnitude 7.1 earthquake stunned central Mexico on Tuesday, killing at least 139 people as buildings collapsed in plumes of dust. Thousands fled into the streets in panic, and many stayed to help rescue those trapped.
Dozens of buildings tumbled into mounds of rubble or were severely damaged in densely populated parts of Mexico City and nearby states. Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera said buildings fell at 44 places in the capital alone as high-rises across the city swayed sickeningly.
The quake is the deadliest in Mexico since a 1985 quake on the same date killed thousands.
It came less than two weeks after another powerful quake caused 90 deaths in the country’s south.
Luis Felipe Puente, head of the national Civil Defense agency, tweeted Tuesday night that the confirmed death toll had risen to 139.
His tweet said 64 people died in Morelos state, just south of Mexico City, though local officials reported only 54. In addition, 36 were killed in the capital, 29 in Puebla state, nine in the State of Mexico and one in Guerrero state, he said.
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.
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.