Desperate search for survivors after Mexico hit by massive quake from buzai232's blog

Rescue workers scrabbled through rubble as dawn broke yesterday, searching for dozens of children feared buried beneath a Mexico City school, one of hundreds of buildings destroyed by the country’s most lethal earthquake in a generation. The 7.1-magnitude quake on Tuesday killed at least 225 people, nearly half of them in the capital, 32 years to the day after a devastating 1985 quake.

The disaster came as Mexico was still reeling from a powerful tremor that killed nearly 100 people in the south of the country less than two weeks ago. Among the twisted concrete and steel ruin of the Enrique Rebsamen school, soldiers and firefighters found the bodies of at least 22 children and two adults, while another 30 children and 12 adults were missing, President Enrique Pena Nieto said. The school is for children aged 3 to 14.

Hundreds of emergency workers spent the night pulling rubble from the ruins of the school with their bare hands under the glare of floodlights. Three survivors were found around midnight as volunteer rescue teams known as “moles” crawled deep under the debris. Yesterday morning, the workers said a teacher and two students had sent text messages from within the ruined building. Parents clung to the hope that their children were still alive. “They keep pulling kids out, but we know nothing of my daughter,” said 32-year-old Adriana D’Fargo, her eyes red, who had waiting for hours for news of her 7-year-old.