Hope for finding Mexico City quake survivors fades

Search focused on two building sites

MEXICO CITY — Five days after the deadly magnitude 7.1 earthquake, the hulking wreckage of what used to be a seven-story office building is one of the last hopes: one of just two sites left where searchers believe they may still find someone trapped alive in Mexico City.

Among the families of the missing, there are periodic moments when spirits lift. A flurry of activity, or relatives are summoned to the search site, raising hopes that someone has been found.

But despair deepens when the work slows or even stops, when rain or an aftershock threatens the stability of the tottering pile, and as day after day passes without their loved ones emerging.

A strong new 6.1 quake earthquake shook Mexico on Saturday. A total of 38 buildings in the Mexican capital — mostly apartment blocks or office buildings — collapsed in the Sept. 19 earthquake, and the first days saw a dramatic scramble with picks, shovels and bare hands to reach survivors.

Mexican marines, the lead force in many of the rescue efforts, said they had recovered 102 bodies and rescued 115 people alive from buildings toppled by the quake, which has killed 319 people including 181 in the capital alone, according to the latest death toll announced Sunday.

Thousands more have been left homeless because their houses or apartment buildings have been rendered too dangerous.

Mexico City Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera reported that 7,649 properties have been examined and 87 percent of those are safe and require only minor repairs. But about 1,000 left standing have been deemed uninhabitable — and the number seemed likely to rise as more are inspected.

One by one the searches have closed, after sniffer dogs were sent in and didn’t find life and thermal imaging devices turned up no body heat signatures. Then heavy machinery moved in to begin removing the mountains of debris. Empty lots began to appear where a building had stood.

Now hopes were focused on concrete slabs at two sites: the former office block in the Roma Norte neighborhood, where around 40 people were believed to be missing, and an apartment building on the south side where searchers were looking for five people.

Expert search teams that flew in from Japan, the United States and Israel have worked alongside their Mexican counterparts to help tunnel, measure and direct the removal of chunks of concrete.

Previously rescuers carved reinforced vertical tunnels into the heart of the wreckage, from there crawling into the narrow, claustrophobic horizontal spaces between the collapsed floors.

But the last time someone was found alive was Wednesday, when a woman was pulled from the rubble. A couple of bodies were found Friday.

Beyond the barricades and the ring of floodlights that lit the area overnight lay a makeshift collection of tents and tarps where anxious family members have endured rain, cold, grief and sleeplessness.

As the names of the confirmed dead trickled in, one by one, their relatives packed their tents and went away.