Gripping narrative of trapped girl falls apart
MEXICO CITY — Scenes of desolation and rejoicing unspooled Thursday at the sites of buildings crumbled by Mexico’s deadly earthquake, which killed at least 274 people and galvanized heroic efforts to reach those trapped.
But a parallel drama transpired as the government announced that there were no missing children in the ruins of a collapsed school — after the country was transfixed for a night and a day by reports of a 12-year-old girl feebly signaling to rescuers from under the rubble. She reportedly had even wiggled her fingers and told rescuers her name and said there were others trapped near her.
On Thursday afternoon, the Mexican navy reported that there was no sign that any child was missing and alive in the rubble of the Enrique Rebsamen school on Mexico City’s south side, where at least 19 children and six adults had died. One more adult might still be trapped in the rubble, navy Undersecretary Angel Enrique Sarmiento said at a news conference.
“All of the children are unfortunately dead,” he said, “or safe at home.”
Outrage ensued over what many Mexicans believed was a deliberate deception.
Sarmiento said a camera lowered into the rubble of the school showed blood tracks where an injured person apparently dragged himself or herself, and the only person it could be — the only one still listed as missing — was a school employee. But it was just blood tracks — no fingers wiggling, no voice, no name. Several dead people have been removed from the rubble, and it could have been their fingers rescuers thought they saw move.
Twitter users quickly brought out the “Fake News” tag and complained that the widespread coverage had distracted attention from real rescue efforts where victims have been pulled from the rubble — something that hadn’t happened at the school in at least a day.
Viewers across the country hung on the roundthe-clock coverage of the drama Wednesday from the only network that was permitted to enter. The military,
which ran the rescue operation, spoke directly only to the network’s reporters inside the site.
Rescue worker Raul Rodrigo Hernandez Ayala had even come out from the site Wednesday night and said that “the girl is alive, she has vital signs,” and that five more children had been located alive. “There is a basement where they found children.”
Reports about the trapped girl led to the donations of cranes, support beams and power tools at the school site — pleas for help quickly met based on the urgency of rescuing children. It was unclear if that affected other rescue operations going on simultaneously at a half-dozen other sites across the city.
The mistake may have come down to a few over-enthusiastic rescuers who, one by one, crawled into the bottom of shafts tunneled into the rubble
looking for any signs of life.
“I don’t think there was bad faith involved,” security analyst Alejandro Hope said. “You want to believe there are children still alive down there.”
The setback could have political repercussions: Education Secretary Aurelio Nuno, often mentioned as a possible presidential candidate, had repeated the story about the girl.
Hope noted “something similar happened in 1985,” referring to the magnitude 8.0 quake that killed 9,500 people.
Media quickly reported that a 9-year-old boy had been located in the rubble days after the Sept. 19 quake 32 years ago. Rescuers mobilized in a huge effort to find the boy, but he apparently never existed.
Mexico’s larger tragedy continued to unfold as rescuers in three states, battling grinding fatigue and mountains of rubble, raced against time, keenly aware of everdwindling odds of finding people alive beneath the debris
after Tuesday’s magnitude 7.1 temblor.
The overall confirmed fatality count was expected to climb as more bodies were recovered. Rescuers at sites across the sprawling metropolis of Mexico City used search dogs and calls to the cellphones of those trapped to try to pinpoint the location of anyone who had survived two nights under the remains of damaged buildings.
For many, the fate of one little boy or girl became a symbolic stand-in for a panorama of loss, either threatened or realized. Even for those without casualties in their circle of family and friends, widely shared news of the rescue effort at the school provided a national commonality after the quake had robbed so many of any sense of safety and normality.
Outside quake-wrecked buildings, successful rescues heartened everyone. Cheers erupted overnight Wednesday at the site of a collapsed multistory office building in Mexico City’s Condesa neighborhood where rescuers pulled three people alive from the rubble, witnesses said. More were believed still trapped, authorities said.
Shows of solidarity were everywhere. On Thursday morning, volunteers armed with shovels lined up near the rescue site to relieve those who had been moving rubble all night. Other volunteers handed out coffee, sandwiches and chilaquiles — a popular Mexican breakfast dish — to dust-covered rescuers.
A continual stream of cars pulled up at makeshift donation centers: ordinary people dropping off food, water, gloves, hard hats and protective face masks.
An elite team of disaster experts, including an urban search and rescue team from the Los Angeles County Fire Department, landed in Mexico City to aid in relief efforts.