Toll Soars as Mexicans Dig for Quake Victims : Fires Burn; Death Count 1,300, Rising

The death toll rose Friday in quake-devastated Mexico City as fires continued to burn amid the rubble and sirens howled while thousands of exhausted rescuers fought to reach people still trapped beneath demolished buildings.

Unconfirmed reports in Mexico City newspapers said there could be 3,000 dead in the stricken capital alone, with thousands more injured and hundreds of others killed throughout the coastal states of Guerrero, Jalisco, Michoacan and Colima.

The Mexican Red Cross said it has confirmed that at least 1,300 people were killed when the earthquake, measuring 7.8 on the Richter Scale, Mexico’s most powerful in more than a decade, struck at 7:18 a.m. Thursday. In Mexico City, an official said more than 1,000 bodies already have been recovered.

“I would not dare give a number,” Mexico City Mayor Ramon Aguirre Velazquez said grimly. Late Thursday, Aguirre had estimated that at least 1,000 people were buried in the wreckage of hotels, business buildings and apartment houses brought down by the force of the temblor.

The mayor said an estimated 5,000 people were treated for injuries.

Chaos and confusion pervaded the entire quake region. No one seemed to have a solid estimate of how much damage and how many deaths and injuries might eventually be counted, either in the capital or in the outlying towns and villages.

One official said about 30 people died in Jalisco state, northwest of Mexico City, though estimates Thursday had been much higher, and that 1,500 were injured. In Michoacan state, 30 people reportedly were killed in the collapse of two hotels in the beach resort of Playa Azul.

Americans Rushing Home

Although damage in Guadalajara and Acapulco was relatively light, American tourists there were reported rushing to airports to fly home.

Thousands of American tourists went to the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City to have radio messages sent to relatives in the States. Two Americans were reported missing and were believed to have been in one of the half dozen hotels that collapsed, embassy spokesman Vince Hovanec said.

Long Beach ham radio operator Paul Barron said, however, that a Mexico City ham told him an unidentified American woman also was killed in the collapse of the building headquartering Cormex, the Mexican division of a New York company. There was no official confirmation.

Two merchant ships, five Mexican trawlers and two dozen small fishing boats were said to be missing in the Pacific Ocean about 135 miles west of Acapulco. The director of a special fishing fleet radio link in Spain said the Spanish crew on a Mexican fishing boat told of seeing 65-foot waves rise out of the ocean. The sea, a crewman reportedly said, “had gone wild.”

The missing ships were a Liberia-registered merchant vessel carrying 22 crewmen and a West German vessel carrying 11, according to Jesus Ferreiro of the radio link Onda Pesquera.

Mountains of Concrete

In Mexico City, where power was gradually being restored, bulldozers and cranes continued to struggle with the mountains of broken concrete so that more bodies could be pulled out of the debris.

Thousands of residents spent the night out of doors in the glow of the unchecked fires, some with tents or makeshift shelters and others without. They were terrified of being caught inside weakened buildings, some on the verge of collapse. Temporary shelters were set up in offices and public buildings.

Families in search of missing relatives combed lists of the injured that were taped to hospital walls, while radio stations relayed messages from separated families.

Makeshift morgues were established as bodies were retrieved from beneath jumbles of concrete slabs. Thousands of police officers and military personnel patrolled battered neighborhoods to protect against looting.

Weeping children wandered through the torn streets in search of their parents. Adults called out the names of family members, sobbing as they went frantically from one rescue scene to the next.

Pleads for Son

Along broad Paseo de la Reforma, black, red and green Mexican banners still hung from lampposts, left over from last weekend’s Mexican Independence Day celebration.

A Mexican mother pleaded over Mexican television for her son. “I have been looking for my son since 9 o’clock yesterday morning,” she said. “His name is Alfonso Rodriguez. Please help me find him.”

One official said at least 250 “major” buildings were destroyed by the quake. Another 50 were believed in danger of collapse in the continuing aftershocks and 1,000 more suffered some damage.

That, the official pointed out, did not include damaged or destroyed homes and small office structures.

Hardest hit in the capital city, whose population is estimated to be at least 18 million, were three large districts, the downtown sector around Plaza de la Constitucion, the eastside Tlatelolco district and a southern section around the national medical center.

Eight hospitals suffered severe damage or had entire wings collapse. The gynecology and obstetrics department at the Mexico General Hospital, where nurses estimated there were at least 300 women patients, caved in. Other buildings in that medical complex in the southern part of the capital also were badly damaged.

In the pre-dawn cold Friday, rescue workers used picks, shovels and plastic buckets to dig through the collapsed Juarez Hospital, trying to reach those buried alive.

Tunneled Through Rubble

Like spelunkers, doctors and nurses made tunnels through the mounds of rubble to give oxygen, water and tranquilizers to their patients and colleagues trapped inside.

As many as 1,500 doctors, nurses, medical students and patients were thought to have been in the 12-story public hospital when it was shaken to the ground.

“There’s still no word,” said Guadalupe Casares, who sat on the sidewalk crying over what might be the fate of her 21-year-old daughter, Maria Soledad, a nursing student who had been working on the eighth floor of the Juarez Hospital.

Exhausted rescue workers said they had managed to dig about 130 victims at the hospital, but decided they could do little more without cranes to move the crumbled concrete walls.

“Many people inside will die, but it’s the only possibility we have for getting some more out alive,” said Dr. Carlos Rojas, a surgeon at the hospital.

Many doctors, of course, were working elsewhere in the city. Dr. Fernando Lopez examined the ruins of the eight-story Montreal Hotel in the southern end of the capital and sadly shook his head.

“There are only cadavers left in there,” Lopez said.

1,000 Trapped

In the Tlatelolco area, said the newspaper Excelsior, at least 1,000 people were trapped in the wreckage of the 13-story, government-built Nuevo Leon apartment complex.

Crews of men clawed Friday at the fiery debris of the shattered Hotel Regis on Avenida Juarez where, they said, they could hear screams but could not see the victims. At least 14 people were known to have died there.

A soldier outside the downtown Hotel Versalles, which collapsed on Thursday, said 23 dead and 18 injured had been removed during the night. He said another 100 people inside had not yet been found.

At the collapsed Principado Hotel, another worker said about 115 people were believed trapped inside.

The Mexican Tourism Ministry said that the other Mexico City hotels destroyed were the Monte Carlo, the Romano and the Castro.

Damaged Hotels

Damaged, with guests evacuated, were the Continental, the Presidente, the Zona Rosa, the Del Prado and the Alameda, the ministry said. The Maria Isbel, the Sheraton, the Holiday Inn and Crowne Plaza also sustained minor damage but guests were not forced out.

An estimated 50,000 people were taking part in the digging.

In the downtown district, ruptured natural gas lines still fed fires that had burned through the night. Firefighters were battling three major blazes. The Colonia Roma district was cordoned off because of gas leaks.

Radio stations carried frequent pleas for surgical instruments, blood, medical supplies and food as well as for picks and shovels to dig in the rubble.

Mexico City Police Chief Ramon Mota Sanchez said the danger of falling buildings was not over. Many, he cautioned, “are in a precarious state and on the verge of collapse.”

Fearful of Disease

Officials were also worried about the possibility of disease becoming the next horror to strike the city. Damage to the canal system reportedly caused flooding of Rio Piedad, an underground river that serves as the city’s sewage system.

Mayor Aguirre said it would take three or four days to restore water service.

American businessman Larry Rubin, who arrived in Dallas from the shattered Mexican capital, said many homes have their own water tanks, but noted that when they are empty there will be no water. “Unless something is done fast,” he said, “there are going to be big problems with typhoid and other epidemics.”

Efforts were being made to bury the bodies quickly to prevent pestilence. A large sign on a bulletin board in Tlatelolco, where about 250,000 people lived in low-cost high-rises, warned residents to identify their kin by early afternoon Friday because the government planned to begin immediate burials.

Moans Heard in Rubble

Despite the constant sirens and the shouting of rescue workers, there could be heard the cries and moans of injured people still trapped in the jagged piles of broken concrete and webs of structural steel.

The commercial television network Televisa was told by one rescue worker that about 100 people were buried alive at another site and volunteer diggers had to be quieted so that the calls and cries for help could be heard.

Near the smashed remains of the Hotel Romano, a Red Cross paramedic said 15 to 20 children had been rescued from the wreckage of a nursery school and four bodies had been removed.

Phones Still Out

With international telephone service still disabled because of damage to the Lindavista telephone exchange, ham radio operators were filling the short-wave channels with messages of frantic residents of the United States and elsewhere in Mexico seeking to learn whether relatives in the quake zone were all right.

Ham operator Paul Stack of Vista said he handled 132 emergency calls for relatives within a 5 1/2-hour period Friday.

It was not known when international telephone service would be restored.

The National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colo., said there were dozens of aftershocks Thursday night and Friday. The strongest registered 4.8 on the Richter scale and its epicenter was close to that of Thursday’s powerful temblor, near the coast about 200 miles southwest of Mexico City.

Marjorie Miller reported from Mexico City and Jack Jones from Los Angeles.