Rescuers search for Mexico quake survivors

Mexico waited anxiously Thursday for signs of life at a collapsed school in the capital, as rescuers continued clawing through rubble for survivors of a 7.1-magnitude earthquake that killed at least 233 people.

Firefighters, police, soldiers and volunteers worked frantically to remove debris in scenes repeated across a swath of central states in Mexico’s second killer earthquake this month.

The most agonizing search was at a school in the south of Mexico City where 21 children and five adults were crushed to death. Many children were still missing.

Rescue workers were desperately trying to reach several children believed to be alive beneath the wreckage in the early hours of Thursday – more than 40 hours after the quake struck. Using a thermal scanner, they had located signs of life in several locations.

“We know that there is a child alive inside [the destroyed school), what we do not know is how to reach her... without risking a collapse and putting rescuers in danger,” rescue coordinator Jose Luis Vergara told Televisa about a young girl whose fate is being closely followed by the country.

A civilian volunteer was able to squeeze into a channel through the rubble to reach the girl and pass her water and oxygen. “I’m very tired,” she said, according to the military.

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

In the Condesa neighborhood, 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 around 30 people thought to be under the rubble.

Beside her were two poles tagged with lists of rescued people, but they did not include the name of her brother Juan Antonio, a 43-year-old accountant who worked on the top floor of the four-story building.

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