Mexico earthquake:
The death toll from the 8.1-magnitude temblor rises to 90.
JUCHITAN, Mexico — Government cargo planes flew in supplies and troops began distributing boxes of food to jittery survivors of an earthquake that destroyed a large part of the city. The nationwide death toll rose to 90.
Some people continued to sleep outside, fearful of more collapses, as strong aftershocks rattled the town, including a 5.2-magnitude jolt early Sunday. Local officials said they had counted nearly 800 aftershocks of all sizes since late Thursday’s 8.1magnitude quake, and the U.S. Geological Survey counted nearly 60 with a magnitude of 4.5 or greater.
Teams of soldiers and federal police armed with shovels and sledgehammers fanned out across neighborhoods to help demolish damaged buildings in Juchitan, where dump trucks choked some narrow streets as they began hauling away tons of rubble.
President Enrique Peña Nieto said a third of the city’s homes were uninhabitable — a problem that extended throughout the region. Both Chiapas and Oaxaca states reported thousands of homes, and hundreds of schools, badly damaged by the temblor.
Oaxaca Gov. Alejandro Murat said Sunday that the death toll in his state had risen to 71, while officials have reported 19 killed in neighboring states.
On the outskirts of Juchitan, the general hospital settled into a temporary home — a school gymnasium with gurneys parked atop the basketball court. The earthquake rendered the hospital itself uninhabitable.
Maria Teresa Sales Alvarez said it was chaos when the earthquake struck the singlestory hospital, but staff moved patients outside and transferred most of those who required specialized care to other sites.
Selma Santiago Jimenez waved flies away from her husband and mopped his brow while he awaited transfer for surgery. He suffered injuries in a motorcycle accident before the earthquake. Windows broke and doors fell in the hospital, but staff quickly helped get her husband out, she said.
At the local fairgrounds in Juchitan, about two dozen residents of a central neighborhood gathered at the gates to what the military was using as a staging ground.
They came to complain that aid packages that the military started distributing Saturday had not arrived to many families. An army captain pleaded for patience, but ultimately agreed to take two pickups full of packages and water to their neighborhood.
It wasn’t enough to satisfy all the residents who mobbed the trucks, but the captain promised soldiers would continue canvassing the city street by street.
The federal government declared three days of mourning, and Murat of Oaxaca said Mexico’s Independence Day celebrations at the end of the week would be suspended in the state.
The New York Times contributed to this report.