Mexico’s navy says there are no missing children at a collapsed Mexico City school where rescuers have been hunting for a girl they believed to be trapped.
Assistant Navy Secretary Angel Enrique Sarmiento said there is evidence of a person who may still alive, but he says it’s probably a school worker.
The search for the supposedly missing girl has been a focus of attention across the country as a symbol of hope following Tuesday’s magnitude 7.1 earthquake.
Sarmiento said 11 children were rescued alive after the quake, while 19 children and six adults died at Enrique
Rebsamen school.
According to Mexican officials, there are no children left in the collapsed school. The person who is possibly alive is an adult. pic.twitter.com/K2jTbHfIiE
Thousands of professionals and volunteers worked frantically at dozens of wrecked buildings across the capital and nearby states looking for survivors of the magnitude 7.1 quake that killed at least 245 people in central Mexico and injured over 2,000.
Late Thursday morning, rescuers were trying to reinforce what’s left of the school as part of the efforts to free possible survivors.
The remains of the building had shifted dangerously earlier Thursday morning, prompting some rescuers to evacuate the top of the rubble pile.
Workers are using iron beams to prop up the structure. It took a dozen or more men to carry each one.
Rescuers carried in lengths of wide steel pipe big enough for someone to crawl through, apparently trying to create a tunnel into the collapsed slabs of the three-storey school building. But a heavy rain fell during the night, and the tottering pile of rubble had to be shored up with hundreds of wooden beams.
Stretchers have also been brought to the edge of the building. A large crane is also on site.
Nurse among volunteers at school collapse: “There’s so much unity between Mexicans to help these kids that God-willing are still alive.” pic.twitter.com/ocAnjqzGH8
The death toll rose after Mexico City Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera said the number confirmed to have died had risen from 100 to 115.
Mancera also said two women and a man had been pulled alive from a collapsed office building in the city’s centre Wednesday night, almost 36 hours after the quake.
‘You still hear people in there’
Even as President Enrique Pena Nieto declared three days of mourning, soldiers, police, firefighters and everyday citizens kept digging through rubble, at times with their hands gaining centimetres at a time, at times with cranes and backhoes to lift heavy slabs of concrete.
“There are still people groaning. There are three more floors to remove rubble from. And you still hear people in there,” said Evodio Dario Marcelino, a volunteer working with dozens of others at a collapsed apartment building.
Crews desperately try to rescue victim in collapsed Mexican school1:04
A man was pulled alive from a partly collapsed apartment building in northern Mexico City more than 24 hours after the quake and was taken away in a stretcher, apparently conscious.
Neighbourhoods unite
People have rallied to help their neighbours in a huge volunteer effort that includes people from all walks of life in Mexico City, where social classes seldom mix. Doctors, dentists and lawyers stood alongside construction workers and street sweepers, handing buckets of debris or chunks of concrete hand to hand down the line.
At a collapsed factory building closer to the city’s centre, giant cranes lifted huge slabs of concrete from the towering pile of rubble, like peeling layers from an onion. Workers with hand tools would quickly move in to look for signs of survivors and begin attacking the next layer.
Government rescue worker Alejandro Herrera said three bodies had been found Wednesday afternoon at the factory.
“There are sounds [beneath the rubble], but we don’t know if they are coming from inside or if it is the sound of the rubble,” Herrera said.
In addition to those killed in Mexico City, the federal civil defence agency said 69 died in Morelos state just south of the capital and 43 in Puebla state to the southeast, where the quake was centred. The rest of the deaths were in Mexico state, which borders Mexico City on three sides, Guerrero and Oaxaca states.
In Atzala in Puebla state, villagers mourned 11 family members who died inside a church when it crumbled during a baptism for a two-month-old girl. People at the wake said the only ones to survive were the baby’s father, the priest and the priest’s assistant.
A rescue worker gestures as he searches through the rubble for students at Enrique Rebsamen school after an earthquake in Mexico City, Mexico, Sept. 20. (Edgard Garrido/Reuters)
Power was being restored in some Mexico City neighbourhoods that already spent a day without power. The mayor said there were 38 collapsed buildings in the capital, down from the 44 he had announced previously.
Canadians in Mexico
There are currently 3,320 Canadians known to be in Mexico. Registration with the federal government is voluntary, however, and that figure “may not reflect the actual number,” said Philip Hannan, spokesperson for Global Affairs Canada.
“As of Wednesday morning, there have been no reports of Canadian casualties,” he said.
In a statement issued Tuesday night, Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland said, “The government of Canada is ready to assist Mexico as needed and appropriate.”
She stressed that Canadians requiring consular assistance should contact Global Affairs toll-free at 1-613-996-8885 or by email at sos@international.gc.ca.
