Anxiety as Mexico mounts last-ditch search for quake survivors
MEXICO CITY, Sept 23 (AFP) - Mexican rescuers worked through the night Saturday 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 1:14 pm (1814 GMT) Friday -- the hour that the 7.1 earthquake struck on Tuesday.
Three days is the limit that experts say people trapped in rubble without water, often with crushed limbs, can hold on. Usually, the next phase is 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 officials would prolong their delicate probing for survivors.
The open-ended extension posed a dilemma for rescue workers in the ruins of a Mexico City clothing factory, just one of 39 collapsed buildings in the capital. Continue, but until when? “There are no indications of anyone inside but they're not sure enough to affirm there's really no one,” explained Daniel Quiroz, a 22-yearold volunteer.
In all likelihood, the death toll was going to rise above the latest figure of 291 given by the civil protection service.
Since the quake, 115 survivors have been plucked from the rubble, according to the Mexican military. But the last suc- cessful rescues happened Thursday. On Friday, there were only bodies being recovered.
Mexico City recorded the highest number of fatalities: 153, with more bodies certain to be found in the mangled remains of 39 buildings that collapsed. The rest of the deaths occurred in the nearby regions of Morelos, Mexico state, Puebla, Guerrero and Oaxaca.
In the capital's trendy central neighborhood of Roma, rescue workers were trying to locate several peoplein 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.
A female firefighter, Teresa Ramirez, cousin of an accountant in the collapsed Roma building, said: “Thank God interna- tional experts have arrived.” Several countries, including the US, Israel, Panama and EU states have sent crews to help. A Japanese emergency team was using a hi-tech scanner on the toppled building in the Roma district.
Jose Gutierrez, father of one of those trapped, and also a civil engineer helping with the rescue, warned that “the structure is at risk of total collapse.” Overnight rain had caused saturated debris to become heavier and shift, he explained.
In the south of Mexico City, at a flattened school where 19 children died, white wreaths lay out, testimony to the mourning of relatives and neighbors.
Tuesday's tragedy struck just two hours after Mexico held a national earthquake drill -- as it does every year on the anniversary of the 1985 quake.