OFFICIALS: ‘GIRL IN THE RUBBLE’ DOES NOT EXIST
MEXICO CITY— Hour after excruciating hour, Mexicans were transfixed by dramatic efforts to reach a young girl thought buried in the rubble of a school destroyed by a 7.1-magnitude earthquake on Sept. 19.
The girl reportedly wiggled her fingers, told rescuers her name was “Frida Sofia” and said there were others trapped near her. Rescue workers scrambled to reach her as Mexicans watched on television.
But Mexican navy officials now say she never existed.
“We want to emphasize that we have no knowledge about the report that emerged with the name of a girl,” Navy assistant secretary Angel Enrique Sarmiento said.
“We never had any knowledge about that report, and we do not believe—we are sure—it was not a reality,” he said.
Sarmiento said a camera lowered into the rubble of the Enrique Rebsamen school showed blood tracks where an injured person apparently dragged himself or herself, and the only person 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.
Sarmiento later apologized for being so categorical, saying that if a person is still trapped it could be a child or an adult.
“The information existing at this moment doesn’t allow us to say if it is an adult or a child,” Sarmiento said. “As long as there is the slightest possibility of someone alive, we will continue searching with the same energy.”
Viewers across the country hung on the round-the-clock coverage of the drama Wednesday from the only network that was permitted to enter.
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.