Translated material
Crying over the city
"At first, the floor shook strongly, as if some giant truck drove nearby. Then the walls came in a shaking, the chandelier swayed, and chairs, dishes and cabinets began to fall. Running away from the house, I heard thousands of dogs that was distributed over the city." Thus, one of the eyewitnesses describes the beginning of the strongest earthquake in the central Mexico , which happened yesterday in the afternoon of local time in the last 32 years. At least 250 people were killed, how many other living and dead remain under the rubble - it is not known.
In Mexico City and other cities and villages of the center of the country, rescuers continue to look for surviving hundreds of collapsed buildings. The epicenter of the dual tremors of the magnitude of 7.1 and 6.2 was southeast of the capital, 55 kilometers from the historical city of Puebla (here, in particular, the film "Frida" with Salma Hayek in the main role of Frida Kalo Frida took place here).
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0:00 0:01:19 Download the media file"We had lunch with our whole big family when the first underground impetus happened. More recently, there was already one strong earthquake, on September 7, when almost 60 people died. And most importantly, our annual exercises for acts in an emergency have just ended, we are all very seriously here. Therefore, no one could believe that all this was not some kind of wild rally. Old, we will stand, but, of course, all the electricity turned off after a few seconds, but all the inhabitants of the surrounding houses were also on the street. The airport is a bunch of nervous people with bags and suitcases who were waiting for the development of events.
Dogs throughout the district howled scary! In Mexico City, many keep dogs, and they always in such cases howl and bark very loudly. And then in the distance, in several places, pillars of smoke began to rise, fires took up. The gasoline exploded in the distance. There was no connection. My cousin and husband immediately got into the car and decided to get home. Then I found out that their apartment did not hit, but it is impossible to live there now, everything is in cracks, the pipes are broken, water, furniture into chips. Thank God, none of them, from my family and close friends, died and not even wounded. But in general, the damage is very large, many houses collapsed. Now communications and communication are beginning to be restored, rescuers are working. There will also be found alive, and dead, I'm sure, ”says Mexican Horche Archer , a historian living in Mexico City in Mexico City.
President Enrique Peni Nieto introduced in the central states of Mexico a state of emergency. He stated that only under the wreckage of primary school in Mexico City, which collapsed due to an earthquake, the bodies of 22 children were already found, adding that at least 30 children in the capital were still absent at home on Tuesday evening. “We are faced with a new national catastrophe,” Nieto said in a special appeal to citizens.
On the streets of Bolshoi Mexico City, agglomerations with a population of almost 25 million people, where night has now come, thousands of rescuers and the military disassemble the rubble and shout the names of those who have already been saved and who could not find. At times, "minutes of silence" are announced. Many people were wounded by fragments of broken glasses of multi -storey buildings, fallen pillars and power lines, and in general as a result of general panic. Public transport does not work. In the morning, at least 5 million people remained on Wednesday without electricity in Central Mexico. All state and private schools in Mexico City and other states of the country injured from the earthquake remain closed.
The disaster on Tuesday occurred on the anniversary of the destructive earthquake, which destroyed thousands of people in Mexico City in 1985 . A few hours before the earthquake on September 19, many Mexicans participated in special exercises conducted by the annually (about which Jorge Archer ) and mourning events in memory of those who died 32 years ago.
As a result of yesterday’s earthquake, the Popocatetl, located next to the capital of the volcano , woke up, on the slope of which the church located here collapsed, in which the service was going on at that moment. At least 15 people in the church were killed. While Popocatepetl only throws out strong pillars of smoke, but the seismologists have already appropriated him the highest, “red” level of danger.
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Alexander GOSTEV
The editor of the RS information service, international observer, author and editor of the heading and podcast "Atlas of the World"
Gosteva@rferl.org