Rescuers in grim search for survivors of Mexico quake

MEXICO CITY – Agence France-Presse

Rescuers dug on Sept. 20 for survivors of a 7.1- magnitude earthquake that killed at least 230 people in Mexico, as the nation watched anxiously for signs of life at a collapsed school in the capital.

Firefighters, police, soldiers and volunteers worked frantically to remove rubble in scenes repeated across a swath of central states in Mexico’s second killer earthquake this month. 

The most agonizing search was at a school in the south of Mexico City where 21 children - aged between seven and 13 - and five adults were crushed to death. Many children were still missing. Rescuers were working under the gaze of anguished parents had managed to locate several signs of life under the rubble using a thermal scanner.

“They are alive! Alive!” shouted Civil Protection volunteer Enrique Garcia, 37. 

“Someone hit a wall several times in one place, and in another there was a response to light signals with a lamp,” he said: “We have been at this since yesterday, but we cannot reach them, because they are trapped between two slabs...”  

So far, 11 children and at least one teacher have been rescued from the rubble of the Enrique Rebsamen elementary and middle school.

“No one can possibly imagine the pain I’m in right now,” said one mother, Adriana Fargo, who was standing outside what remained of the school waiting for news of her seven-year-old daughter.