‘Titanic task’ ahead for Mexico
Tears, fear and anxiety rule as mourners pull themselves together
JUCHITAN DE ZARAGOZA: Sobbing Mexican families followed coffins through the streets and picked nervously at the ruins of their homes as help trickled in after a huge earthquake killed 90 people.
“I don’t know if I am crying from sadness, from shock, or from fear of what might happen next, and how we will live,” said Refugio Portales in the hard-hit town of Juchitan yesterday.
Mexican seismological authorities measured Thursday night’s quake at magnitude 8.2, under the Pacific off the coast of Chiapas state.
That was bigger even than the 8.1 quake that killed 10,000 people in Mexico City in 1985.
People in Juchitan were afraid to return to their homes, fearing the effects of hundreds of aftershocks – but camped within sight of them to prevent looting.
Juana Luis, 40, spent the night with her family under a tree in the garden of their house, which was reduced to a pile of concrete rubble, twisted metal and electrical cables.
“It is very sad to live like this, on hammocks hung in the garden, under the rain, with our belongings buried in the house,” she said.
Luis secured some emergency food handouts, but food prices have soared in the disaster zone.
“We used to get a chicken for 70 pesos (RM16.60) and now it costs 300 pesos (RM71).
“That makes me really anxious, because I can’t afford to buy,” she said in tears.
As soldiers and mechanical diggers worked to clear the ruins of the town hall, some picked cautiously through the rubble to salvage household items.
“We are afraid to go inside our houses to remove the rubble, but we have no other choice because no one is coming to help us,” said Carlos Villalobos Martinez, 58.
He said he escaped “by a miracle” with his wife and three children when their house collapsed.
At the square near the town’s Martes Santo church, a group of women camped in the rain, cooked eggs on a fire and prepared corn tortillas.
“We still have no water or electricity. We are sleeping with the children out here in the open,” said one of them, Maria de los Angeles Orozco.
“No one has come to help us.” Ivan Rodriguez, 40, echoed that sentiment, saying “we’ve received very little help”.
Authorities counted all the fatalities in the states of Chiapas, Oaxaca and Tabasco.
On Sunday night, the federal government said it confirmed a report that 25 more people had been found dead in Oaxaca, bringing the overall toll to 90. — AFP