Toll Mounts : Mexico Lists Dead, Hunts for Living

A stunned Mexico counted the dead and searched for the living Friday, struggling to recover from a giant earthquake that turned the world’s biggest metropolis into a dust-shrouded city of terror and tragedy.

The Mexican Red Cross said at least 760 people had been confirmed killed in last Thursday morning’s devastating tremor, local television reported. Unconfirmed estimates of the dead in Mexico City ranged up to 3,000.

“I would not dare give a number,” said a grim-faced Mayor Ramon Aguirre.

Reports were even sketchier from the surrounding countryside, where unofficial accounts spoke of hundreds killed in areas closer to the epicenter of the quake, which reached a powerful 7.8 on the Richter scale.

1,000 Were Buried

Late Thursday, Aguirre said at least 1,000 people were buried in scores of collapsed buildings in Mexico City, and hour by hour bodies were being pulled from the rubble. Five thousand people were treated for injuries, the mayor said.

He urged residents to stay home at night; closed theaters, nightclubs and other gathering spots to check for structural damage, and banned the sale of alcoholic beverages until at least Monday.

Sirens echoed nonstop through the capital’s downtown streets. Fires flickered and smoldered in the ruins of destroyed buildings, pouring smoke into the dust raised by Thursday’s upheaval. Crying children wandered through the streets, calling for their parents.

Tens of thousands of emergency volunteers, using picks, heavy construction equipment or bare hands, clawed through the rubble in search of survivors.

Aftershocks Continue

Smaller aftershocks continued to rumble through the city Friday, each one a new terror.

Offers of aid poured in from around the world, including from the United States, but the U.S. Embassy said there was no immediate Mexican response.

The quake casualties apparently included at least two Americans, whose names were not immediately released. Embassy spokesman Vince Hovanec said the two were guests at a hotel that was severely damaged. “There is the probability that they may be dead,” he said. He did not immediately release their identities.

The earthquake, centered on the Pacific coast about 250 miles southwest of Mexico City, struck at 7:18 a.m. (6:18 a.m. PDT) Thursday in the 7,800-foot-high capital, a sprawling conglomeration whose 18 million people make it the world’s most populous urban area, according to U.N. figures.

250 Buildings Down

The long, heaving movement of the earth brought down hotels, hospitals, schools and churches. The city’s Emergency Relief Council said 250 buildings were destroyed and 1,000 to 2,000 others were heavily damaged or on the verge of collapsing.

The disaster also struck the nearby states of Colima, Guerrero, Jalisco and Michoacan.

Between 110 and 150 people were killed and 1,500 were injured in Jalisco, said a fire lieutenant there, Juan Manuel Sanchez. Mexican television said 25 worshipers were killed in the Jalisco city of Guzman when a cathedral collapsed. In Michoacan, 30 people were reported killed when two hotels collapsed at the beach resort of Playa Azul.

Mexico City newspapers, citing no official sources, estimated the eventual death toll at 3,000 in the capital and 300 in the provinces.

Power Being Restored

Communications officials said at least 60% of the nation’s 167 major telephone exchanges were damaged. Power was being gradually restored Friday. Airports were reported operating normally.

Three large areas of the capital were hardest hit--the historic downtown area around the vast Zocalo square, the east-side Tlatelolco district and a southern district around the national medical center.

Multistory buildings became heaps of masonry, their collapsed floors stacked like pancakes. Others tilted crazily. Streets throughout the city were littered with broken glass and plaster. Crushed automobiles sat at curb sides, and hundreds of others had tires punctured by the debris.

Pathetic scenes were everywhere.

‘Help Me Find Him’

“I have been looking for my son since 9 o’clock yesterday morning,” a sobbing mother told a television reporter. “His name is Alfonso Rodriguez. Please, please help me find him!”

At the medical center, some of whose buildings were heavily damaged, people crowded before the metal gates, desperate for word on family members hastily evacuated from the facilities.

At the Hotel Regis, now just a 40-foot-high pile of rubble, rescuers used front-end loaders to lift aside massive concrete slabs and search for survivors. Firefighters sprayed water on the ruins to put out small fires. One exhausted, dust-covered soldier said he had been there since 10 a.m. Thursday and would continue working “until there is no more hope.”

Despite all, that hope persisted. At the collapsed seven-story Romano Hotel, rescue workers cutting through the top of the debris pulled out an Englishman identified as Paul E. Needham, 22, who apparently survived with minor injuries because his room was on the top floor of the hotel.

Resorts Survive

Damage was reported limited at Mexico’s famous Pacific resorts. Amateur radio operators said Acapulco’s major beach hotels were “in good condition,” said Richard Hawkins of the Office of Emergency Management in Houston. In Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo, at least five hotels were reported damaged, but only one death, in a private residence.

Some Mexico City neighborhoods escaped major damage, and residents jogged, shopped and dined out as usual. Even there, however, cracks, broken glass and other minor damage could be seen.

Further disaster may be ahead. The devastation in Mexico City, the financial, governmental and industrial center of a nation of 75 million people, further threatened a Mexican economy weakened by a huge foreign debt.