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Teams
of soldiers and police hack at fallen concrete walls with pickaxes and shovels
in Mexico City
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Rescuers and volunteers
frantically dug through the rubble, looking for survivors of Mexico’s deadliest
earthquake since 1985 as the number of confirmed fatalities climbed to 248
early on Wednesday.
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The
North American and Cocos tectonic plates rub one another, creating friction
that causes earthquakes - sometimes, as in the case of Tuesday's disaster, away
from their edges. The September 7 earthquake is believed to be unconnected
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Tuesday’s
magnitude 7.1 quake struck on the 32nd anniversary of the tremor that killed
thousands and came just two hours after earthquake drills were held across
Mexico to mark the date.
One
of the most desperate rescue efforts was at a primary and secondary school in
southern Mexico City, where a wing of the three-story building collapsed into a
massive pancake of concrete floor slabs.
At the scene, journalists saw rescuers pull at
least two small, sheet-covered bodies from the rubble.
The
federal Education Department reported late on Tuesday night that 25 bodies had
been recovered from the school’s wreckage, all but four of them children.
It
was not clear whether the deaths were included in the overall death toll of 248
reported by the federal civil defence agency.
During
a visit to the site earlier in the night, President Enrique Pena Nieto had
reported 22 bodies found and said 30 children and eight adults were reported
missing at that point.
A
mix of neighbourhood volunteers, police and firefighters used trained dogs and
their bare hands to search through the school’s rubble.
Reports
swept through the crowd of anxious parents outside the gates that relatives in
two families had received WhatsApp messages from girls trapped inside, but that
could not be confirmed.
The
rescue effort continued long through the night, the work punctuated by cries of
“quiet” so searchers could listen for any faint calls for help.
“They
have heard voices in there,” Mr Pena Nieto said.
Rescuers
had to shore up the fallen concrete slabs with wooden beams so they would not
collapse further and crush whatever tiny air spaces remained.
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| Rescue
workers help a woman strapped to a stretcher down the rubble of a collapsed
building |
In
a video message released late Tuesday, Mr Pena Nieto urged people to be calm
and said authorities were moving to provide help as 40% of Mexico City and 60%
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
buildings tumbled into mounds of rubble.
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 blocking traffic.
Dust-covered
and exhausted from digging, Carlos Mendoza, 30, said two people were pulled
alive from the ruins of a collapsed building in the Roma Sur neighbourhood
during a three-hour period.
“When we saw this, we came to help. This is ugly, very ugly,” he said, gesturing at the destruction.”
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