Trapped girl a symbol of hope
As Mexico toll rises, survival tales endure
MEXICO CITY: A delicate effort to reach a young girl buried in the rubble of her school stretched into a daylong vigil for Mexico, much of it broadcast across the nation as rescue workers still struggled in rain and darkness early yesterday trying to pick away unstable debris and reach her.
The sight of her wiggling fingers became a symbol for the hope that drove thousands to work frantically at dozens of wrecked buildings across the capital and nearby states looking for survivors of the magnitude-7.1 quake that killed at least 245 people in central Mexico.
Mexico City Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera said two women and a man had been pulled alive from a collapsed office building in the city’s centre on Wednesday night, almost 36 hours after the quake.
Even as President Enrique Pena Nieto declared three days of mourning, soldiers, police, firefighters and everyday citizens kept digging through rubble, at times with their hands gaining an inch at a time, at times with cranes and backhoes to lift heavy slabs of concrete.
“There are still people groaning. There are three more floors to remove rubble from. And you still hear people in there,” said Evodio Dario Marcelino, a volunteer who was working with dozens of others at a collapsed apartment building.
A man was pulled alive from a partly collapsed apartment building in northern Mexico City more than 24 hours after the Tuesday quake and taken away in a stretcher, apparently conscious.
In all, 52 people had been rescued alive since the quake, the city’s Social Development Department said.
But the country’s attention focused on the collapsed Enrique Rebsamen school on the city’s south side, where 21 children and four adults had been confirmed dead.
Hopes rose when workers told local media they had detected signs that one girl was alive and she speaking to them through a hole dug in the rubble. Thermal imaging suggested several more people might be around her, but it wasn’t clear if anyone beside the girl was alive.
Alfredo Vega, who was working with the rescue team, said that a girl who he identified only as “Frida Sofia” had been located alive under the pancaked floor slabs.
Dr Vega said “she is alive, and she is telling us that there are five more children alive” in the same space.
Workers were still trying to get to the girl as the operation crossed into a new day.
At a collapsed factory building closer to the city’s center, giant cranes lifted huge slabs of concrete from the towering pile of rubble, like peeling layers from an onion. Workers with hand tools would quickly move in to look for signs of survivors and begin attacking the next layer.
Government rescue worker Alejandro Herrera said three bodies had been found on Wednesday afternoon at the factory.
“There are sounds [from inside the collapsed building], but we don’t know if they are coming from inside or if it is the sound of the rubble,” Mr Herrera said.