Mexican rescuers worked through the night in a desperate last-ditch search for survivors of an earthquake that killed nearly 300 people, hoping to defy experts who have said the chances of finding life in the rubble after 72 hours are bleak.
That 72-hour mark beyond which hope is considered futile expired at 1:14pm on Friday — the hour that the magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck on Tuesday.
Three days is the limit that experts say people trapped in rubble without water, often with crushed limbs, can hold on. Usually, the next phase is sending in bulldozers to clear away the debris and recover bodies.
However, with Mexicans remembering “miracle” rescues a week following a worse earthquake in 1985 that killed 10,000 people in the capital, and with anguished families refusing to cede to grief, Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto promised officials would prolong their delicate probing for survivors.
“We have to keep up the rescue effort to keep finding survivors in the rubble,” he said on a visit to neighboring Puebla State, also badly hit.
“No to machinery. Yes to hope,” read one handwritten sign outside a toppled building in Mexico City.
The open-ended extension posed a dilemma for rescue workers in the ruins of a Mexico City clothing factory, just one of 39 collapsed buildings in the capital.
Continue, but until when?
“There are no indications of anyone inside, but they’re not sure enough to affirm there’s really no one. The camera used doesn’t allow a full view,” 22-year-old volunteer Daniel Quiroz said.
In all likelihood, the death toll was going to rise above the latest figure of 291 given by the civil protection service.
Since the earthquake, 115 survivors have been plucked from the rubble, the Mexican military said.
However, the last successful rescues happened on Thursday. On Friday, there were only bodies being recovered.
Mexico City recorded the highest number of fatalities: 153, with more bodies certain to be found in the mangled remains of 39 buildings that collapsed.
The rest of the deaths occurred in the nearby states of Morelos, Mexico State, Puebla, Guerrero and Oaxaca.
Several countries, including the US, Israel, Panama and members of the EU have sent crews to help.
A Japanese emergency team was using a high-tech scanner on the toppled building in the Roma district.
Charity group Save the Children said 100,000 children in Mexico City were affected by the earthquake, with hundreds of them left to sleep in the streets and parks, despite about 50 shelters being opened.
Many adults wondered where they and their families will live after the earthquake damaged more than 2,000 homes — most of which were not insured.
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