Thousands still homeless a week after quake
MEXICO CITY — A week after an earthquake that killed more than 300 people, thousands of Mexicans were still unable to return on Tuesday to their badly damaged homes, much less their normal lives.
After a week of eerie quiet in Mexico City, the capital’s heavy traffic was visible again as the city of 20 million people began returning to work and school.
But many residents still had nowhere to go after losing everything in last Tuesday’s magnitude-7.1 quake.
“You think it will never happen to you. I’ve lost track of what day it is. All we’ve managed to do is find some donated clothing, because we were left with nothing but the clothes on our backs,” said journalist Gerardo Alvarez, a 31-year-old Venezuelan.
He and his wife have been staying with friends since the quake, which left their apartment building on the verge of collapse.
They are hunting for a new apartment, but prices in undamaged buildings have soared in the past week, he said.
Mexico City Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera has announced that those made homeless by the quake will receive temporary rent support of some $170 a month.
Architects and engineers have meanwhile been crisscrossing the disaster zone evaluating around 9,000 damaged buildings to decide which can be repaired and which must be demolished.
Thirty-nine buildings collapsed in the quake. Another 700 need repairs and 300 have major damage.
The city center was a bizarre mix of shops and restaurants going about business as usual, alongside collapsed and damaged buildings cordoned off by barriers and yellow tape.
Outside some afflicted buildings, people gathered waiting for authorities to tell them when they could go back in to get the things they left behind.
Rescue workers have now wrapped up their efforts at all but a few sites in Mexico City and the chances of pulling more survivors from the rubble are dim.
Emergency teams from Japan, El Salvador, Honduras and Panama have headed home.
The government faced protests Monday night by seething relatives of those still inside the biggest search site, a seven-story office building in the hard-hit Roma neighborhood.
Family members threatened to burst through security barriers and take to the rubble themselves if the authorities did not release more information on the operations inside.
“We acted for seven days and seven nights peacefully, waiting for results. Our patience is over ... Please update the lists” of bodies recovered, said one relative, Ines Sandoval.
The latest death toll stands at 333 people — 194 of them in Mexico City.