It marked the second powerful quake to hit Mexico in less than two weeks, after an 8.1 magnitude natural disaster struck off the country’s Pacific coast 12 days earlier.
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The quake happened on the anniversary of a 1985 tremor that killed thousands and still resonates in Mexico.
Rescue workers in Mexico City were still trying Thursday to free survivors buried in the rubble of the Enrique Rebsamen school, where at least 25 children have died. Journalists saw rescuers pull at least two small bodies from the rubble, covered in sheets.
The provisional death toll from the earthquake-triggered collapse of a school in Mexico’s capital has risen to 37 – 32 children and five adults, local media reported on Wednesday.
News is emerging of the rescue operations in the city where rescuers are now working to free a little girl they have found trapped in the rubble. She says she has faith that he’s fine and she’ll see him again soon.
“It is going to be a huge government effort and as a community, we have to be there for them”.
“Faced with the force of nature, we are all vulnerable and that is why we all unite when it comes to saving a life or helping a victim”, said President Enrique Pena Nieto. He said the priority is to provide medical care to the injured and rescue people still trapped in the rubble.
People across central Mexico already had rallied to help their neighbours as dozens of buildings tumbled into mounds of rubble.
View of a collapsed building following a magnitude 7.4 natural disaster on the Richter scale in Mexico City, Mexico, 19 September 2017.
“But we know that it’s important to come out into the streets to help”, Victoria Lopez said. “This is ugly, very ugly”. Officials say 11 children were rescued, but 19 children and six adults died. More than 200 people have been reported dead so far. It was just hours after that drill she was running from a crumbling building.
Tuesday’s deadly quake in Mexico City killed more than 200 people, but the city is no stranger to tragedy.
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The death toll includes 100 dead in Mexico City, 69 in Morelos, 43 in the state of Puebla, 13 in Mexico state, four in Guerrero state and one in Oaxaca state.
