ALERT: Mexico Earthquake- Death Toll Surpasses 200 (September 20, 2017)

September 20, 2017

As Mexico combs the rubble, authorities are reporting that at least 225 people died as a result of yesterday’s 7.1 earthquake. Mexico City’s international airport tweeted that it had suspended operations following the quake.

According to CNN:

Most of the deaths have been reported in Mexico City, where at least 94 people were killed, Luis Felipe Puente, head of Mexico’s national civil defense agency, said. Another 71 people were killed in Morelos state, 43 in Puebla, 12 in the State of Mexico, four in Guerrero and one in Oaxaca. The country has declared three days of mourning for those killed in the quake, according to Mexico’s Secretary of Public Function.

The deadly earthquake struck on the 32nd anniversary of the 1985 earthquake that killed 10,000 people. Residents in Mexico had conducted earthquake drills just hours earlier. The earthquake occurred just two weeks after a magnitude 8.1 tremor in the south of the country killed more than 90 people and caused buildings in Mexico City to sway for more than a minute. President Enrique Pena Nieto called that earthquake the biggest quake the country has seen in a century.

Late Tuesday, Mexico’s president issued a video statement urging people to stay calm in the aftermath of the quake. Nieto said many people will need help, but the initial focus has to be on finding people trapped in wrecked buildings.

“The priority at this moment is to keep rescuing people who are still trapped and to give medical attention to the injured people,” the president said, adding that 40 percent of Mexico City and 60 percent of Morelos state had no electricity.

The federal government declared a state of disaster in Mexico City, freeing up emergency funds. Nieto said he had ordered all hospitals to open their doors to the injured.

ABC News reports:

Mexico City’s airport descended into chaos as the ground rippled and chunks of plaster fell from the walls when the earthquake hit, Dallas resident George Smallwood told ABC News.

“I felt the ground shaking, and I heard everyone screaming and starting to run,” he said, adding that he initially thought he was in the middle of a terror attack.

Smallwood had stopped in Mexico City for a long layover after a vacation in Medellin, Colombia, and had spent the day exploring the capital. He was getting ready to go through security at Mexico City International Airport for his 3:35 p.m. flight back to Dallas when the earthquake struck.

Parts of the ceiling were “swinging back and forth,” he said, and the panicked crowd took off “running in every different direction.”

The tremors lasted for about six to seven minutes, he estimated. After the shaking subsided, first responders swooped in to help the injured and a fleet of military and police helicopters buzzed overhead, he said.

Smallwood’s flight was rescheduled for 8:30 a.m. today, so he needed to find somewhere to stay for the night, he said.

Tuesday’s earthquake — which hit at about 2:14 p.m. ET near the town of Raboso in Puebla state, according to the United States Geological Survey — comes 11 days after a magnitude-8.1 quake struck off Mexico’s southern Pacific coast, killing dozens of people.

According to NPR:

As the morning sun rose over the cities of Central Mexico on Wednesday, where once city blocks had lain neatly arranged, there was now a mess of rubble and despair-stricken residents, watching as thousands of earthquake volunteers and rescue workers dug through scattered stones searching for signs of life.

The 7.1-magnitude quake struck Tuesday in Puebla state, some 75 miles from Mexico City, but it devastated a vast expanse of the country. The head of Mexico’s civil defense agency said early Wednesday that 225 people had died in the temblor, in toppled buildings across five states and in the capital.

In Mexico City, where the agency says 94 people died, search efforts took on particular intensity at a collapsed school. Escuela Enrique Rebsamen — a school geared toward children ages 3 to 14, according to Reuters — caved in on dozens of students and their teachers Tuesday.

Rescue workers have found the bodies of at least 22 of those children and two adults, according to Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto. Reuters reports at least 40 more people are missing, though hope remains: At midnight, the wire service says three people were saved from the debris.

Yet the rescue efforts have also yielded terrible discoveries, too. One volunteer had managed to dig his way into a collapsed classroom, The Associated Press reports, “only to find all of its occupants dead.”

“We saw some chairs and wooden tables,” he told the news service. “The next thing we saw was a leg, and then we started to move rubble and we found a girl and two adults.”

Elsewhere, in the state of Morelos, at least 71 people died, while the earthquake’s effects killed at least 43 people in Puebla state. And 17 others died in three other states in the region.

In a stroke of terrible irony, Tuesday’s earthquake struck 32 years to the day to one of the worst temblors in the country’s history. That 1985 quake took thousands of lives and shattered cities, including Mexico City, wreaking such destruction that the country continues to mark its anniversary with simulated drills.

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