Rescuers swarmed over rubble with shovels and picks on Thursday in a frantic search for survivors two days after Mexico’s deadliest earthquake in a generation, focusing on 10 collapsed buildings where people may still be alive, Reuters reported.
Those trapped included five Taiwanese workers in a textile factory in downtown Mexico City. But the Navy said a missing schoolgirl whose fate captured the nation “did not exist,” leading to an outpouring of anger over the mix-up.
The death toll was at least 273, officials said. Mexico City Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera said 50 people were missing.
Working without pause since Tuesday afternoon’s 7.1-magnitude quake, first responders and volunteers have saved 60 survivors from central Mexico City to poor neighborhoods far to the south.
Late on Wednesday night, an eight-year-old girl was rescued from a collapsed building in the Tlalpan neighborhood, nearly 36 hours after the quake, local officials said.
Luis Manuel Carrillo Nunez, 14, said he was in a yoga class at the Enrique Rebsamen private school on Tuesday when he heard people yell, “It’s shaking!”
He ran to escape the building as it began collapsing. But some classmates never made it out.
“It’s hard to know that you’re not going to see again the friends that you loved. I‘m really traumatized,” he said.
The full scale of damage has not been calculated, with buildings across the city of 20 million people badly cracked. Citigroup’s Mexican unit Citibanamex told clients it was lowering its 2017 economic growth forecast to 1.9 percent from 2.0 percent due to the earthquake.
Some families made dangerous trips back into damaged structures to pull out possessions, and trucks with mattresses, furniture and televisions rumbled through the streets.