Terrible wait for kin’s fate
Survivors trapped
Rescue workers continued the search Friday for trapped survivors of the magnitude-7.1 quake that shook Mexico City, as worried relatives kept vigil for news of loved ones.
“There are moments when you feel like you’re breaking down,” said Patricia Fernandez Romero, whose 27year-old son, Ivan Colin Fernandez, was still missing in the rubble of a seven-story office building in the Roma Norte neighborhood.
“And there are moments when you’re a little calmer . . . They are all moments that you wouldn’t wish on anyone.”
Romero was one of several people camped out in a bike lane near the downtown office building, where workers were racing to locate the missing.
Many families waited for small scraps of information — any sign that their kin might still be alive.
“It’s that you get to a point when you’re so tense, when they don’t come out to give us information,” Romero said of the rescue workers. “It’s so infuriating.”
The death toll from the devastating quake climbed to 293 on Friday — and officials said 60 people in all have been rescued since Tuesday.
“My family is in there. I want them to get out,” said José Gutierrez, a civil engineer who was working with rescue teams at the devastated office building. “So . . . we go onward.”
Francisco Javier Mendez, who has a daughter believed to be trapped inside, said he was told “maybe six” people were still alive in the building.
“They know because they have detected the warmth,” he said. “What they don’t know is how many or how long they will last.”
Officials tried to comfort relatives who have yet to locate their loved ones, assuring them that search and rescue efforts have not ended. “It is false that we are demolishing structures where there could be survivors,” said National Civil Defense chief Luis Felipe Puente. “The rescue operations will continue, and they won’t stop.”
Over half of the dead — 155 people — were killed in the Mexican capital. Another 73 perished in the state of Morelos, 45 in Puebla, 13 in Mexico State, six in Guerrero and one in Oaxaca.
Meanwhile, Adm. Angel Enrique Sarmiento, assistant secretary of the Mexican navy, has apologized for erroneous reports that a 12-year-old girl was trapped beneath the rubble of a collapsed school.
Her supposed discovery made international news and captivated the public — until officials said Thursday that there were no children left in the schoolhouse.
“I want to make it very clear that the information the Mexican public received about the existence of a girl who was alive underneath the rubble was released by the navy based on the technical reports and the accounts of the civilian and navy rescuers,” he said.
“I offer the Mexican public an apology for the information disseminated [Thursday] afternoon where I affirmed that I did not have details about a supposed child survivor in this tragedy.”