RESCUERS MOUNT LAST-DITCH EFFORT
Mexico trying to locate quake survivors before bulldozers clear debris
MEXICO CITY
RESCUERS worked through the night yesterday in a desperate last-ditch search for survivors of an earthquake that killed nearly 300 people, hoping to defy experts who say the chances of finding life in the rubble after 72 hours are bleak.
That 72-hour mark beyond which hope is considered futile expired at 1.14pm on Friday — the hour that the 7.1 earthquake struck on Tuesday.
Three days is the limit that experts said people trapped in rubble without water, often with crushed limbs, can hold on. Usually, the next phase was sending in bulldozers to clear away the debris and recover bodies.
But with Mexicans remembering “miracle” rescues a week following a worse quake in 1985 that killed 10,000 in the capital, and with anguished families refusing to cede to grief, President Enrique Pena Nieto promised offi cials would prolong their delicate probing for survivors.
In the capital’s trendy neighbourhood of Roma, rescue workers were trying to locate people in the wreckage of a collapsed seven-story office building.
They had pulled 28 survivors from the mountain of rubble in two days. But on Friday, despair was setting in.
“Since yesterday, they haven’t pulled anyone out,” wailed Xochitl Gonzalez, 39, cousin of one of those trapped.
“There are probably 50 people inside” in what used to be an accounting office, said one woman who said she worked there.
Anxious relatives kept vigil, their faces pallid. Some averted their gaze from the rubble. Tents set up for them were unslept in.
“Keep the faith,” a Spanish rescue worker urged the families waiting at the site. AFP