The last body known to be trapped in rubble following Mexico’s magnitude 7.1 earthquake has been recovered, officials said Wednesday.
The body was recovered from a collapsed office building in central Mexico City where a steadily dwindling number of families kept vigil for two weeks as an international assortment of rescuers worked a massive rubble heap. It was the last known active recovery site.
Roberto Campa, the Interior Department’s deputy secretary for human rights, said via Twitter that 49 bodies were recovered from the site. They include 19 women and 30 men.
The remains of a building that collapsed in an earthquake and a red tape reading ‘danger’ are seen after rescue teams retrieved the last body trapped in the rubble, in Mexico City on Wednesday. (Daniel Becerril/Reuters)
Mexico City Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera said in an interview with Milenio television that the office building, which counted an employment agency and accounting firm among its tenants, was the last place in the city where bodies were being recovered.
“We do not have any missing person,” he said. Mancera added that all bodies had been identified.
The official federal death toll was not immediately updated, but on Tuesday officials said 366 people had died in the Sept. 19 earthquake. Of those, 225 were in the capital.
However, Mancera said Wednesday the capital’s total had reached 228.
