Search for schoolgirl likely to be a wild goose chase
MEXICO: Mexican officials have expressed doubt that any children - dead or alive - remain in the rubble of a collapsed elementary school in Mexico City, an outcome that could turn into an emotional whipsaw for a country that has been fixated on the search for a missing pupil following a devastating earthquake.
Authorities yesterday confirmed 25 dead - 19 children and six adults - at the school, and said that 11 other children were treated at hospitals for non-life-threatening injuries. They said all pupils had been accounted for.
‘‘It is very likely that there is nobody,’’ a senior Mexican official said at the site, while insisting that the search would continue until any shred of doubt was removed.
The prospect that no more children will be found could be an embarrassment for the Mexican government, as the story of ‘‘Frida Sofia’’, a 12-year-old girl reportedly trapped in the debris, has burgeoned into a media sensation.
The school had emerged as a symbol of the horror and heartbreak caused by Tuesday’s 7.1-magnitude earthquake, which has left at least 273 people dead and more than 2000 injured in the capital and five states.
On the third day of the rescue effort, hopes were dwindling that victims in other parts of Mexico City or surrounding states might be saved. But emergency workers and volunteers continued to frantically dig in the rubble of shattered buildings.
It was not immediately clear how the story originated that a girl remained buried inside the school. Around-the-clock media coverage of the rescue operation has riveted the Mexican public, and senior Mexican officials, including Edu- cation Secretary Aurelio Nuno Mayer, spent hours at the school watching the effort.
The senior official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said a decision now had to be made about whether to resort to demolition equipment to take down the building more quickly.
Officials overseeing the search now believe that nobody named ‘‘Frida Sofia’’ attended the school. The family of the only Frida who was enrolled were found to be ‘‘pleasantly asleep with the girl’’ at home, according to the senior official. - Washington Post