Child found alive in rubble of school
Girl found alive among collapsed school ruins
MEXICO: A child has been found alive under the rubble of a collapsed Mexico City school following a 7.1 magnitude earthquake which killed 225 people across Mexico.
Rescuers spotted the child in the debris of the school and shouted to her to move her hand if she could hear them, which she did.
A CHILD has been found alive under the rubble of a collapsed Mexico City school following a 7.1 magnitude earthquake which killed 225 people across Mexico.
The girl was found by rescuers in the debris at the Enrique Rebsamen school in a southern area of the capital.
Foro TV reported that rescuers spotted the child and shouted to her to move her hand if she could hear them, which she did. A search dog subsequently entered the wreckage and confirmed she was alive.
The chief of Mexico’s national civil defence agency said 225 people are now known to be dead following the tremor on Tuesday.
Luis Felipe Puente said in a tweet that 94 are confirmed dead in Mexico City, 71 in Morelos state, 43 in Puebla, 12 in the State of Mexico, four in Guerrero and one in Oaxaca.
President Pena Nieto declared three days of national mourning for the victims.
The official Twitter account for the Office of the Presidency announced the declaration, saying “Mexico shares your pain”.
Tuesday’s quake struck on the 32nd anniversary of a 1985 tremor that killed thousands. Just hours before it hit, people around Mexico had held earthquake drills to mark the date.
At the Rebsamen school, a wing of the three-storey building collapsed.
Journalists saw rescuers pull at least two small bodies from the rubble, covered in sheets. Volunteer Dr Pedro Serrano managed to crawl into the pile of rubble. He made it into a classroom, but found all of its occupants dead.
He said: “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.
“We can hear small noises, but we don’t know if they’re coming from above or below, from the walls above (crumbling), or someone below calling for help.”
The federal Education Department reported late Tuesday that 25 bodies had been recovered from the school’s wreckage, all but four of them children.
It is not clear whether those deaths were included in the overall death toll of 225 reported by the federal civil defence agency.
Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto had earlier reported 22 bodies found and said 30 children and eight adults were reported missing.
Mr Nieto urged people to be calm and said authorities were moving to provide help as 40 per cent of Mexico City and 60 per cent of nearby Morelos state were without power.
But, he said, “the priority at this moment is to keep rescuing people who are still trapped and to give medical attention to the injured people”.
People across central Mexico already had rallied to help their neighbours as dozens of build- ings tumbled into mounds of broken concrete.
Mexico City mayor Miguel Angel Mancera said buildings fell at 44 sites in the capital alone as high-rises across the city swayed and twisted and hundreds of thousands of panicked people ran into the streets.
The huge volunteer effort included people from all walks of life in Mexico City, where social classes seldom mix.
The Twitter feed of civil defence agency head Luis Felipe Puente said 94 dead had been counted in Mexico City and 71 in Morelos state, which is just south of the capital.
It said 43 were known dead in Puebla state, where the quake was centred. Twelve deaths were listed in the State of Mexico, which borders Mexico City on three sides, four in Guerrero state and one in Oaxaca.