BURIED ALIVE
25 children crushed at school as Mexico quake kills hundreds
DOZENS of children were crushed to death in their school when a powerful earthquake killed hundreds in Mexico.
Emergency services and volunteers battled to find survivors trapped in the rubble from the hundreds of buildings that collapsed during the 7.1-magnitude quake.
At least 225 people in central Mexico have been killed, with fears the death toll will rise as the rescue teams continue their search.
Thousands were forced to flee their homes after the quake reduced buildings to piles of masonry. The tremor also fractured gas mains and caused fires as falling masonry crushed hundreds of cars.
A primary school in Mexico City collapsed, with at least 25 children and two adults already found dead. Last night a desperate search was underway for the 30 pupils and 15 adults still missing. There were hopes that some had survived after a young girl was spotted alive among the wreckage last night.
Tearful parents looked on as the remains of the school, which teaches children aged three to 14, was searched by specialist ‘mole’ rescue teams, who managed to crawl deep into the mounds of crushed concrete.
Adriana D’Fargo, whose seven-year-old daughter was still missing last night, said: ‘They keep pulling kids out but we know nothing of my daughter.’
Local doctor Pedro Serrano, 29, volunteered to crawl into the rubble and found a classroom with no survivors.
He said: ‘We dug holes, then crawled in on our bellies. We saw some chairs and wooden tables. The next thing we saw was a leg, then we started to move rubble and found the bodies of a girl and two adults, a woman and a man.’
The national disaster came 32 years to the day that Mexico suffered a massive quake that killed around 10,000 and left 100,000 homeless.
Tuesday’s quake hit at 1.14pm – two hours and 14 minutes after members of the public took part in ‘anniversary’ drills to remember the previous killer tremor.
It follows another earthquake that killed 100 people in the south of the country less than two weeks ago. The epicentre of the quake was in Atencingo in the state of Puebla, some 75 miles south-east of Mexico City. In the nearby town of Atzala, a church collapsed during a baptism, killing 11 in the congregation including the baby.
Another 15 were killed when a church near the Popocatepetl volcano collapsed during Mass. The volcano itself had a small erup- tion as a result of the tremor. A total of 43 deaths were said to have occurred in Puebla, with 71 killed in the neighbouring state Morelos.
However Mexico City was understood to have been hardest hit, with 86 people confirmed dead as electricity supplies were cut to many of the affected areas. Following the quake, rescuers descended on the collapsed Enrique Rebsamen school in the city’s Coapa district.
President Enrique Pena Nieto urged the country’s citizens to stay in their homes if they could do so safely to give emergency vehicles better access to the streets.
Last night some 3,500 soldiers had been deployed to help with the rescue effort.
‘This earthquake is a hard and very painful test for our country,’ he said.
‘Us Mexicans have had difficult experiences as a consequence of earthquakes in the past. And we have learned to respond to these episodes with commitment and the spirit of solidarity.’
‘We dug holes and found the bodies’