Rescuers race to free survivors; 52 pulled out
MEXICO CITY» The wiggling fingers of a young girl trapped in the rubble of her collapsed school in Mexico City raised hopes among hundreds of rescuers working furiously Wednesday to try to free her — a drama that played out at dozens of buildings toppled by the powerful earthquake that killed at least 230 people.
But it was the rescue operation at the Enrique Rebsamen school — where 25 people, including 21 children, perished — that was seen as emblematic of Mexicans’ rush to save survivors before time runs out.
Helmeted workers spotted the girl buried in the debris early Wednesday and shouted to her to move her hand if she could hear. She did, and a rescue dog was sent inside to confirm she was alive.
Hours later the crews were still laboring to free her, as images of the rescue effort were broadcast on TV screens nationwide. Workers in neon vests and hel-
mets used ropes, pry-bars and other tools, frequently calling on the anxious parents and others gathered around to be silent while they listened for any other voices from beneath the school.
At one point, the workers lowered a sensitive microphone inside the rubble to scan for any noise or movement. A rescuer said they thought they had located someone, but it wasn’t clear who.
“It would appear they are continuing to find children,” said Carlos Licona, a burly sledge-hammerwielding volunteer who came to help in any way he could. Asked if that made him optimistic, he said, “I hope so.”
It was part of similar efforts at the scenes of dozens of collapsed buildings, where firefighters, police, soldiers and civilians wore themselves out hammering, shoveling, pushing and pulling debris aside to try to reach the living and the dead after Tuesday’s magnitude 7.1 quake.
By midafternoon, 52 people had been pulled out alive since the quake, Mexico City’s Social Development Department said, adding in a tweet: “We won’t stop.”
Among them were 11 people rescued at the Enrique Rebsamen school, where two children and an adult remained missing.
Earlier, journalists saw rescuers pull two small bodies from the rubble, covered in sheets.
More than 24 hours after the collapse, the debris being removed from the school began to change as crews worked their way inside: from huge chunks of brick and concrete, to pieces of wood that looked like remnants of desks and paneling. A final load contained a half dozen sparkly hulahoops.
A volunteer rescue worker, Pedro Serrano, managed to crawl into the crevices of the tottering pile of rubble and make it to a classroom, where he found no survivors.
“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. All were dead.
“We can hear small noises, but we don’t know if they’re coming from ... the walls above or someone below calling for help,” Serrano said.
A child’s baptism turned into tragedy in Atzala when the roof of a church collapsed. Eleven members of a family died, including the 2-month-old girl being christened. The only survivors were the girl’s father, the priest and the priest’s assistant, the Archdiocese of Puebla said Wednesday. At least four minors were among the dead.
“It was a scene of horror, sadness with most of the people inside the church dying,” priest’s assistant Lorenzo Sanchez said.
Sanchez said those who survived moved to the edges of the church when the swaying started while those who died didn’t have time to do so.
When the ground stopped shaking, people called for help using loudspeakers and residents of nearby communities quickly arrived with shovels, pickaxes and chains to haul away rubble. They dug for hours through the crumbling remains of the Santiago Apostol church.