After 16-Day Search, Bulldozers Clearing Building’s Rubble : Quake Rescuers Give Up Hope for Trapped Boy

Hope of rescuing a 9-year-old boy believed trapped under debris of an apartment house brought down by Mexico City’s 8.1 earthquake all but evaporated Saturday night as cranes and bulldozers began to clear away the rubble.

An engineer sent by city officials with equipment to detect noise or movement beneath the jumble of concrete, brick and mortar said he heard nothing during two hours of testing early Saturday evening.

“There exists no possibility of life,” said Julian Aved, a private engineer.

But he said that the equipment operators would work slowly in case they should come across signs of life.

Rescuers had worked around the clock since Monday to save Luis Ramon Nafarrate. They believed he had survived the quake even though wreckage from a building next door crashed into an apartment where he and his grandfather were sleeping.

At the news that heavy equipment would begin tearing away at the debris, Luis Ramon’s father, Mauricio Nafarrate, wept on the shoulder of a physician.

A reporter asked him what the news was. He answered, “Negative, negative.”

During the afternoon, Nafarrate had pleaded with government officials not to bring in the machinery. After a two-hour delay, lack of new evidence of life and the increasingly desperate race against time led to a decision to go ahead.

The activity appeared to end one of the most emotional episodes following the Sept. 19 quake, which killed more than 7,000 people.

Attempts to rescue Luis Ramon were marked by heroism, tenacity, hope and crushing disappointment, disorganization, falsehoods and tiffs among rescuers--in short, everything right and wrong about the whole Mexico rescue effort.

Scores of people, including newborn babies who spent more than a week buried under crumpled buildings, were rescued. But no survivor has been pulled from ruins for a week. To have lived, Luis Ramon would have had to withstand not only 16 days under the rubble but also a gas tank explosion and fire that followed the collapse of his section of an old courtyard apartment building.

The decision to bring in heavy equipment upset rescue workers who had painstakingly tunneled through the debris in search of the boy, their efforts spurred by reports of tapping noises beneath the wreckage. They believed he might have been preserved in some open pocket, spared from the collapse of the taller building next door onto the three-story building where he slept.

However, the tunnels were vulnerable to cave-ins, and rescuers could never figure out exactly where the boy might be.

The rescue attempts were accompanied by wild stories about conversations with Luis Ramon and even physical contact. None were true, police officials and rescue supervisors said.

One especially painful moment occurred Friday when a rescue worker emerged from the apartment to say that Luis Ramon had talked, a report that was later discredited. Ramon Nafarrate, the boy’s paternal grandfather, came running to ask what had happened. A Mexican reporter told him that the boy had been rescued alive. The elder Nafarrate shouted for joy, only to burst into tears when he heard that it was untrue.

Meanwhile, foreign rescue specialists briefly entered and exited the drama. A group of Algerian firemen left Friday after the arrival of rescuers from the Dade County, Fla., Fire Department. The Algerians said they were tired.

Mexican rescuers became angry at reporters for talking to the newcomers, thinking that the latter were trying to steal the limelight in what has become a national drama.

Hands Not Enough

Amid such confusion, volunteers worked with great endurance. Some wept when told that heavy machinery was being brought in that would probably cause the collapse of their tunnels.

“It’s no longer worth it to work only with shovels and picks and hands,” said Alejandro Rios, a mining engineer who worked on and off for 10 days. “We can’t make enough progress.”

Rios lay on the sidewalk on Venustiano Carranza Street near the apartment, exhausted and tearful. “I don’t know if I feel defeated,” he said. “I try to think only of the technical aspects of the work.”

Rios, still wearing his dusty hard hat, explained that rescue workers had been unable to locate the collapsed second floor of the apartment where Luis Ramon and his grandfather were staying when the earthquake hit.

At one point, Rios and others dug through a wall, thinking they were about to discover a second-floor bedroom. Instead, they came upon stacks of cloth and trash from the building next door.

Like other rescuers, Rios has heard noises in the debris that led many to believe that Luis Ramon lived.

“Yes, noise. Yes, noise in answer to calls,” Rios said. “We don’t know what it is exactly. But we have made a good-faith effort to find life.”

Although tired, Rios said he would not go home. “I have to see what happens, how it ends,” he said.