Desperate search:
Mexican quake toll swelled by pupil deaths
A VOLUNTEER rescuer told yesterday how he managed to crawl into one of the classrooms at a school which collapsed during the Mexican earthquake, only to find that everyone inside was dead.
With more than 200 lives thought to have been lost in the country’s deadliest quake in decades, one of the most desperate rescue efforts took place at a primary and secondary school in southern Mexico City, where a wing of the three-storey building collapsed.
At the Escuela Enrique Rebsamen, journalists saw rescuers pull at least two small, sheet-covered bodies from the rubble.
The federal education department said 25 bodies had been recovered from the school’s wreckage, all but four of them children.
At the rubble of the school, volunteer rescuer Dr Pedro Serrano managed to crawl into the tottering pile of rubble. He made it into a classroom, but found all of its occupants dead.
“We saw some chairs and wooden tables. The next thing we saw was a leg, and then we started to move rubble and we found a girl and two adults – a woman and a man,” he said.
“We can hear small noises, but we don’t know if they’re coming from above or below, from the walls above (crumbling), or someone below calling for help.”
A mix of local volunteers, police and firefighters used trained dogs and their bare hands to search through the wreckage of the school.
The crowd of anxious parents outside the gates shared reports that two families had received WhatsApp messages from girls trapped inside, but that could not be confirmed.
Later, a girl was found alive by rescuers. Foro TV reported that volunteers spotted the child and shouted to her to move her hand if she could hear them, which she did. A search dog subsequently entered the wreckage and confirmed she was alive.
Mexican president Enrique Pena Nieto urged people to be calm and said authorities were moving to provide help as 40 per cent of Mexico City and 60 per cent of nearby Morelos state were without power.
People across central Mexico had already rallied to help their neighbours as dozens of buildings tumbled into mounds of rubble.
Mexico City mayor Miguel Angel Mancera said buildings fell at 44 sites in the capital alone as high-rises across the city swayed and twisted and hundreds of thousands of panicked people ran into the streets.
Volunteer Carlos Mendoza, 30, said two people were pulled alive from the ruins of a collapsed apartment building in the Roma Sur neighbourhood.
“When we saw this, we came to help,” he said, gesturing at the destruction. “This is ugly, very ugly.”
Buildings also collapsed in Morelos state, including the town hall and local church in Jojutla near the quake’s epicentre.
The Queen and former US President Barack Obama were among foreign leaders who sent messages of sympathy to Mexicans.
The monarch said she was “deeply saddened to learn of the loss of life and the devastation”.
We can hear small noises, but we don’t know where from. Volunteer rescuer Dr Pedro Serrano who has been helping to search the rubble.