Mexico City recalls quake of 1985
MEXICO CITY — The sun had just risen as a 70-year-old woman, alone beside a 100-foot cement slab that was once the base of an eight-story apartment building, lit the candles she had placed beside her walking cane and a bouquet of flowers.
She made sure the wicks were aglow by 7:19 a.m. Monday, the moment sirens blared across the city to mark exactly 20 years since residents were shaken from their beds by an earthquake that claimed an estimated 10,000 lives.
Many more people were left injured, homeless and fighting for survival in the dusty hell that followed.
From the airwaves to street corners, people paused, shed tears and sometimes choked up as they remembered how a generation ago this metropolis was hit with a national catastrophe on the scale of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and Hurricane Katrina rolled together.
“It was horrible,” María del Socorro López Vega recalled. “I do not think any human being could be psychologically prepared for what we went through.”
Building C-4, where dozens died, tells the story of many Mexicans.
López Vega said that on each anniversary of the earthquake, she sets up a small shrine on the slab, all that is left of the gritty structure in the Colonia Roma neighborhood.
She recalled the engineer and his two sons, the recently married couple and other neighbors, some who she’d known well for years, others with whom she only exchanged greetings when coming or going. All died in the rubble.
She was making breakfast the morning the building shook. López Vega grabbed a framed image of the Virgin of Guadalupe and ran for the streets.
Her memories are vivid. There was a huge fog of dust and the air smelled of natural gas from ruptured pipes. Some people were screaming or crying. Others were silent, motionless, stunned into a stupor.
Neighbors used their hands, plastic buckets or anything they could find to dig for survivors. Among the debris were books, clothing, toys and other belongings. Curtains and sheets were pulled from the rubble to wrap the dead, she said.
Residents didn’t realize how widespread the damage was and initially were angry that rescuers hadn’t arrived.
The woman’s brother, Víctor Manuel López Vega, 59, a car salesman, later said he was struck at how chaos enveloped the city.
People he had known for years lost all their possessions and were never heard from again after being sent to hospitals, shelters or relocated out of state.
He recalled pulling an unconscious friend from the rubble and carrying her to an ambulance. She was breathing the last time he saw her. He doesn’t know if she survived.
There were so many dead that a nearby baseball stadium, which has since been bulldozed and turned into a shopping mall, was converted into a temporary morgue.
Bodies resting on blocks of ice filled the outfield.
Oscar Trani, 40, joined one of the impromptu civilian rescue brigades that worked Building C-4 and the surrounding area.
He said he lost several friends in the neighborhood, including a family of five, all them found in each others arms and believed to have died after running out of air in a pocket within the rubble.
“You heard screams and realized people were beneath you,” said Trani, an actor.
As he searched for survivors, Trani said, he saw a man’s arm extending from the rubble and grabbed it.
“I pulled it and it was just an arm,” he recalled. “I could not speak. I did not know what to do.”
He recalled how soldiers had tried to keep people, including rescuers, away from the rubble — until about 15 schoolgirls broke through their ranks and cleared the way for rescuers.
Despite the problems of government inaction or incompetence, strangers came together, Trani said.
“It didn’t matter who you were or what you had, you were a brother,” he said. “I have many brothers from that day.”
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