Rescuers are fighting to save a 12-year-old girl from the rubble of her collapsed school in Mexico City after spotting her wriggling fingers poking out from a pile of debris. Frida Sofia has been able to communicate with rescuers, telling them there are two other students nearby but she could not tell if they were dead or alive. After initially searching the third floor, technical cameras discovered she was actually trapped 10ft below, under two fallen slabs of cement.
At least 21 children have died and a further 30 remain missing at the Enrique Rebsamen school in a southern area of the capital. The official death toll of Tuesday’s 7.1-magnitude earthquake has now risen to 230, with Mexico City bearing the brunt of the deaths and damage. So far 100 people have been confirmed dead in the capital, where over 40 buildings have collapsed. Rescuers are continuing to search for survivors using thermal scanners and cameras to locate bodies, and ropes, pry bars and sledge-hammers to break up and move rubble. Emergency services have been joined by Mexico’s “mole” rescue workers, who formed as a volunteer search and rescue group in the aftermath of the devastating quake that struck Mexico City in 1985.
They have worked at disaster sites across the world including the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York. Oscar Guevara, a doctor from the central Mexican state of Queretero who joined the Topos of Tlatelolco search and rescue group in 2010, said they had found three people alive, along with some bodies, in the rubble of one building. President Enrique Pena Nieto has declared three days of national mourning, but said the race to pull out survivors was still the priority. Mexican actress Salma Hayek has donated $100,000 (£74,000) to help victims of the quake, posting an emotional video on Instagram, imploring others to help if they can.
She explains that she “lived through the aftermath” of the 1985 Mexican earthquake which killed 5,000 and caused serious damage to Mexico City. Harry Potter author JK Rowling has also tweeted, calling the disaster “heartbreaking” and appealing for others to donate. The quake was centred near Raboso in Puebla state, 76 miles (123km) southeast of Mexico City, but the shaking in the capital was almost as intense. When it struck, panicked workers fled from office buildings and clouds of dust rose up from the crumbling facades of damaged buildings. The earthquake came less than two weeks after an 8.1 magnitude tremor in southern Mexico killed at least 98 people. Amid the latest quake, the Popocatepetl volcano near the capital had a small eruption, flattening a church on its southern slopes and killing 15 people attending a mass.
Source: Sky news
