Rescuers display a placard reading
"Silence" as they hurry to free
possible victims out of the rubble
of a collapsed building after a
quake rattled Mexico City on
September 19, 2017. (Pedro Pardo/AFP/Getty
Images)
Search
for
Mexico
quake
survivors
enters
day 4,
some
success
apnews.com
MEXICO
CITY -
Survivors
are
still
being
pulled
from
rubble
in
Mexico
City as
rescue
operations
stretch
into a
fourth
day
Friday,
spurring
hope
among
desperate
relatives
gathered
at the
sites of
buildings
collapsed
by a
magnitude
7.1
earthquake.
Mexico’s
federal
police
said
several
people
were
lifted
out of
the
debris
of two
buildings
Thursday.
Rescuers
removed
or broke
through
slabs
until
they
found
cracks
that
allowed
workers
to
wiggle
through
to reach
the
victims,
then
lift
them to
safety.
The city
government
said 60
people
in all
had been
rescued
since
the
quake
hit at
midday
Tuesday.
Still,
with the
hours
passing,
fewer of
the
living
were
being
found,
and the
official
death
toll
rose to
273 in
Mexico
City and
several
nearby
states,
with 137
in the
capital.
The time
was
nearing
when
rescuers
would be
replaced
by
bulldozers
to clear
rubble,
but
officials
went to
great
pains to
say it
was
still a
rescue
operation.
The
federal
civil
defense
director,
Luis
Felipe
Puente,
acknowledged
that
backhoes
and
bulldozers
were
starting
to clear
away
some
wrecked
buildings
where no
one had
been
detected
or where
teetering
piles of
rubble
threatened
to
collapse
on
neighboring
structures.
Images
taken by
DigitalGlobe’s
WorldView-2
satellite
captured
quake
damage
to
Mexico
City.
(Sept.
21)
“It is
false
that we
are
demolishing
structures
where
there
could be
survivors,”
Puente
said.
“The
rescue
operations
will
continue,
and they
won’t
stop.”
Those
who
witnessed
the
buildings
collapse
said the
tragedy
could
have
been
much
worse.
Some
buildings
didn’t
fall
immediately,
giving
people
time to
escape,
and some
shattered
but left
airspaces
where
occupants
survived.
In other
cases,
the
salvation
seemed
almost
miraculous.
Security
guard
Felix
Giral
Barron
said
that
after
the
quake
started,
he had
time to
run and
tell
people
to
evacuate
his
building.
Then an
entire
apartment
building
across
the
street
crumbled
and a
big tank
of
heating
gas on
its slid
off, but
didn’t
explode.
“The
550-pound
(250-kilogram)
gas tank
got
caught
by the
trees on
the
street,
and that
prevented
it from
exploding,”
he said.
What was
not
miraculous
was the
disappearance
of one
of the
most
dearly
held
hopes,
the
belief
that a
small
girl
trapped
in a
collapsed
school
had been
contacted
by
rescuers.
Since
early
Wednesday,
the
nation’s
attention
had been
glued to
the
search
for her
in the
rubble
of the
school
in
southern
Mexico
City.
Rescuers
told
reporters
that a
girl,
identified
only as
Frida
Sofia,
had
signaled
she was
alive
deep in
the
rubble
by
wiggling
her
fingers.
Rescuers
said
they
even
spoke
with
her.
The
child
became a
symbol
of hope,
but no
family
members
came
forward
to
identify
the
girl,
and
officials
said no
girl by
that
name was
registered
at the
school.
On
Thursday
afternoon,
navy
Assistant
Secretary
Enrique
Sarmiento
announced
that
while
there
were
blood
traces
and
other
signs
suggesting
someone
could be
alive
beneath
the
school,
all its
children
had been
accounted
for.
“We have
done an
accounting
with
school
officials
and we
are
certain
that all
the
children
either
died,
unfortunately,
are in
hospitals
or are
safe at
their
homes,”
Sarmiento
said.
He said
11
children
had been
rescued
and 19
had
died,
along
with six
adults,
including
a school
employee
whose
body was
recovered
just
before
dawn
Thursday.
“We want
to
emphasize
that we
have no
knowledge
about
the
report
that
emerged
with the
name of
a girl,”
Sarmiento
added.
“We do
not
believe
— we are
sure —
it was
not a
reality.”
In fact,
he said,
the only
trace
rescuers
had were
images
from a
camera
lowered
into the
rubble
that
showed
blood
tracks
where an
injured
person
apparently
dragged
himself
or
herself.
Sarmiento
said the
only
person
still
listed
as
missing
was a
school
employee.
But it
was just
blood
tracks —
no
fingers
wiggling,
no
voice,
no name.
Several
dead
people
have
been
removed
from the
rubble,
and it
could
have
been
their
fingers
rescuers
thought
they saw
move.
Sarmiento
later
apologized
for
being so
categorical,
saying
if
anyone
was
still
trapped
could be
a child
or an
adult.
“The
information
existing
at this
moment
doesn’t
allow us
to say
if it is
an adult
or a
child,”
Sarmiento
said.
“As long
as there
is the
slightest
possibility
of
someone
alive,
we will
continue
search
with the
same
energy.”
Alfredo
Padilla,
a
volunteer
rescuer
at the
school,
played
down the
importance
of the
revelation
that
there
was no
trapped
child.
“It was
a
confusion,”
Padilla
said.
“The
important
thing is
there
are
signs of
life and
we are
working
on
that.”
And hope
burned
on.
Outside
a
collapsed
office
building
in the
trendy
Roma
Norte
district,
a list
of those
rescued
was
strung
between
two
trees.
Relatives
of the
missing
compared
it
against
their
own list
of those
who were
in the
building
when the
quake
struck —
more
than two
dozen
names —
kept in
a spiral
notebook.
Maria
del
Carmen
Fernandez’s
27-year-old
nephew,
Ivan
Colin
Fernandez,
worked
as an
accountant
in the
seven-story
building,
which
pancaked
to the
ground,
taking
part of
the
building
next
door
with it.
She said
the last
time the
family
got an
update
was late
Wednesday,
when
officials
said
about 14
people
were
believed
to be
alive
inside.
Three
people
have
been
rescued
from the
building
since
the
quake.
“They
should
keep us
informed,
because
I think
what
kills us
most is
the
desperation
of not
knowing
anything,”
Fernandez
said as
her
sister,
the
missing
man’s
mother,
wept
into her
black
fleece
sweater.
Referring
to
rumors
that
authorities
intended
to bring
in heavy
machinery
that
could
risk
bringing
buildings
down on
anyone
still
alive
inside,
Fernandez
said:
“That
seems
unjust
to us
because
there
are
still
people
alive
inside
and
that’s
not OK.”
“I think
they
should
wait
until
they
take the
last one
out,”
she
said.