Homes, buildings devastated during aftershocks

JUCHITAN, Mexico — Life for many has moved outdoors in the quake-shocked city of Juchitan, where a third of the homes are reported uninhabitable and repeated aftershocks have scared people away from many structures still standing.

The city on Sunday was littered with rubble from Thursday night’s magnitude 8.1 earthquake, which killed at least 90 people across southern Mexico — at least three dozen of them in Juchitan itself.

Officials in Oaxaca and Chiapas states said thousands of houses and hundreds of schools had been damaged or destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of people were reported to be without water service.

Many people continued to sleep outside, fearful of more collapses, as strong aftershocks continued to rattle the town, including a magnitude 5.2 jolt early Sunday.

Some Juchitecos seeking solace trekked through the destruction to find an open-air Mass on Sunday since many of the churches were either damaged or left vacant until they could be checked.

Local officials said they had counted nearly 800 aftershocks of all sizes since the big quake, and the U.S. Geological Survey counted nearly 60 with a magnitude of 4.5 or greater.

Juchitan’s downtown streets grew increasingly congested Sunday with dump trucks and heavy equipment to haul away debris. Smaller piles of debris were pushed into larger mountains of rubble reminiscent of the cleanup after a blizzard.

Delia Cruz Valencia stood in a puddle-filled street overseeing demolition of what remained of her sister’s house next door. Her sister took their mother for medical treatment outside the city before the earthquake and had not been able to make her way back.

Cruz said she was next door with her two daughters when the earthquake struck shortly before midnight Thursday.

“We all three hugged, but even so we were moving. We were pushed from here to there” by the rolling earth, she said.

When she reached the street, she saw a cloud of dust rising from the house her sister shared with their mother. Cruz’s great-grandfather had built it a century ago.

“If my sister had been here, she wouldn’t have been found alive,” Cruz said, choking back tears.