Mexico’s amazing survival tales
City’s denizens tell miraculous stories in wake of massive quake
MEXICO CITY: A tree branch saved a maintenance mechanic from the collapsing building where a dozen coworkers died when last week’s earthquake rocked central Mexico.
A slap across the face startled a dazed father back to his senses, spurring him to carry his critically injured daughter to safety.
Neighbours, coworkers and passersby pulled people from the jaws of death, while taxis, private cars and even buses rushed them to hospitals.
Amid the endless tragedies from the magnitude 7.1 quake that killed more than 300 people, there were incredible stories of survival.
Conrad Vazquez Martinez, a 67yearold mechanic, was on the roof of the fourstorey laboratory building where he worked in Mexico City’s Roma Norte neighbourhood when the quake hit at midday on Sept 19.
“I wanted to run to get to people, but the building was collapsing behind me,” Vazquez Martinez said on Wednesday as he lay in a bed at the Magdalena de las Salinas hospital, recovering from a broken hip and leg.
“I ran and ran, and with one jump I grabbed a branch that grew close to the building.”
Vazquez Martinez never let go of the branch, and it proved a lifesaver as he fell through the lower branch and onto the sidewalk in front of a neighbouring building, breaking his hip and leg.
Then a second miracle: A metal balcony grill fell over him, partly shielding him from the impact of rubble that tumbled over him.
The branch, which he still gripped in one hand, poked out of the debris to give him a trickle of air.
“The metal grate had a screen, so the chunks of concrete didn’t fall directly on me,” he said.
His face, mouth and nose full of rubble, Vazquez Martinez noticed that a jug of water he had on the roof had fallen nearby.
“God is so great, that even water was provided,” he added.
“Losing my coworkers was what most hurts.
“My hope was to get out and save people, but I couldn’t, I failed.
“But I closed the gas tank. It was a bomb there. It may have saved the whole neighbourhood,” he said of the heating gas tank on the roof.
Dr Fryda Medina, director of the hospital where he is being treated, said that on the day of the quake, patients were delivered by volunteers in private cars and taxis.
The staff, and even retirees, all volunteered to work through the nights and days, when over 300 injured were brought in.
“In those moments, one feels the spirit we have in Mexico, the solidarity,” Medina said at the hospital, operated by Mexico’s Social Security Institute.
American photojournalist Wesley Bocxe and his wife, Elizabeth, made it to the roof of their 10storey apart ment building when the quake started.
His wife was killed when the floors underneath pancaked, but Bocxe somehow survived, though he was seriously injured.
Local media quoted one woman who said that she and relatives took refuge in the bathroom of their upper floor apartment, and the room plunged intact to near street level.
The quake was a nightmare for a family of four in the Iztapalapa neighbourhood on Mexico City’s gritty east side.
The father and mother rushed out of their home with their nineyearold daughter and 13yearold son when the shaking started, only to have a sixfoot (2m) perimeter wall fall on the children.
The debris crushed the girl’s pel vis, damaged her liver and caused internal bleeding. A broken bone in the boy’s leg poked though his skin and blood spurted out.
The father said he was shocked into a stupor by the sight but a quick slap from his wife brought him back to his senses.
“I went into shock,” he said at the Magdalena de la Salinas hospital.
“I thought she was dead. Her mother slapped me because I was totally gone. I turned to her and she said, ‘She’s still alive!’’’
The girl is now on her hospital bed, her father holding her hand. She talked to psychologists, and now can recall the moments of terror.
“I saw the earth cracking open. It was an illusion,” she said.
“When I went through that scare, I thought I wasn’t going to live,” said her father. — AP