225 KILLED AS 7.1 QUAKE HITS MEXICO

7.1magnitude quake strikes on anniversary of deadly 1985 temblor

Rescue teams were desperately searching for survivors of a powerful earthquake on Tuesday evening that killed at least 217 people in Mexico on the anniversary of another massive quake that haunts the country.

Soldiers, police and civilian volunteers worked through the night after Tuesday’s 7.1-magnitude quake, hoping to find survivors beneath the mangled remains of collapsed buildings in Mexico City and across a swath of central states.

“The armed forces and federal police will continue working non-stop until every possibility of finding more people alive is exhausted,” interior minister Miguel Osorio Chong tweeted.

The most agonizing search was at a school where 21 children and five adults were crushed to death, and where at least 30 children were still missing.

Hundreds of soldiers, police and volunteers wrestled with the wreckage through the night trying to extract a teacher and two students found alive beneath the rubble.

President Enrique Pena Nieto, who rushed to the site, warned that the death toll could rise.

Suspicion was already mounting of shoddy building standards at the school.

Parks and plazas in the centre of Mexico City were meanwhile flooded with people unable or afraid to return home for the night after the quake caused

their walls to sway and crack.

Rescue workers reported that families were getting WhatsApp messages pleading for help from desperate relatives trapped under debris.

Patients were evacuated from the capital’s hospitals, wheeled out on beds and wheelchairs.

Mexico City’s international airport closed for more than three hours following the quake. The stock market was shut, but was set to reopen on Wednesday.

The destruction revived haunting memories in Mexico on the anniversary of another massive quake in 1985 that killed tens

of thousands people, the country’s deadliest ever.

Tuesday’s quake struck just two hours after Mexico held a national earthquake drill, as it does every September 19 to remember the 1985 event.

Adding to the national sense of vulnerability, the earthquake struck just 12 days after another quake that killed nearly 100 people in southern Mexico.

Experts said the two quakes did not appear to be related, as their epicentres were far apart.

Mexico sits atop five tectonic plates, making it particularly vulnerable to earthquakes.