Mexico City (AP) – Every September 19th, Mexico City residents ask themselves an uneasy question: “Is the ground shaking?”
At 7:19am 40 years ago, an 8.1 magnitude earthquake and its aftershocks devastated the Mexican capital. The official count puts the death toll at around 12,000, but the actual number remains unknown.
Earthquakes were a fork for cities. A new culture of civil defense has evolved, better warning systems have been developed, building standards have been changed, and earthquake training has been held annually that day since 2004.
Then, that same day in 2017, things changed again. Just two hours after the annual drill, a fierce heartbeat of 7.1 magnitude began to shake the ground. The epicenter was very close to the capital, so the warning alarm did not sound.
This time nearly 400 people died, and the word spread in an instant on social media, but the destruction showed that there were still some lessons learned, as many deaths were prevented.
Regardless of whether the ground is shaking or not, the capital’s residents continue to rattle on September 19th. For many, it’s because there are symbols in cities that have not been forgotten.
Here are some of them:
Hotel Regis
In the world before 1985, one image from an earthquake was burned into public memory. The signs of a gorgeous hotel regis, crowned with a mountain of tiled rubs, have been reduced to early 20th century buildings (the center of political, artistic and social life).
Today, vendor stalls cover the area where its magnificent pillars once stood. This is a site called Solidarity Plaza, honoring the thousands of average people who came out to help the day.
Surviving baby, collapsed hospital
The red clouds grew up right in front of Enrique Linares, a young accounting student. People ran down the street, doctors running with white lab coats chalked with red dust. Linares looked up at Boyd, where a 12-storey tower with a red light above, was supposed to be standing there. At that moment he began to shake and realized that the hospital had collapsed.
The search for survivors lasted for days with soldiers controlling access to the site. About a week later, the effort paid off. A recently born infant was rescued alive from a kawara rub. They were called “miracle babies” and even inspired a TV series about them.
The tailor’s cry
At first, the screams came from a tailor buried in one of the capital’s collapsed fiber plants, reminiscent of 65-year-old Gloria Juandiego. Soon the screams came from people like people outside the tile rub. The soldiers did nothing, she said.
“The bosses put out equipment, raw materials, safe boxes and made that a priority,” she said. They did not tear the rescued clothing to make tourniquets. He then said, “Even if my body was thrown into a truck and the authorities began to demand that my colleague be rescued, the smell and image came. In the end, hundreds of tailors who normally worked 12 hours without a break were killed.
“Our submissions were buried under the tiles,” read a popular sign of the time. It was the beginning of the Tailors Union on September 19th.
Still, on September 19, 2017, another earthquake locked up a textile worker working under similar conditions with heavy equipment in an inadequately constructed building. The only difference was that the victim this time was immigrants.
“mall”
“We were digging with cans of sardines and our hands,” recalls Francisco Camacho, now 66. He was one of the young people looking for survivors of the collapsed apartment building of Tlatelolco Plaza in 1985.
The women organized a chain of volunteers and removed a bucket full of debris. The kids brought water. Camacho remembered Tenor Platido Domingo. He also helped the volunteers drill holes and say they were raw “as if they were moles.”
Therefore, a volunteer rescue group known as the “Lost Post” (Malls) was born. The organization has grown from 20 amateurs to the diverse power of around 1,200 people today. Now, a powerful symbol of Mexican solidarity, they traveled to 32 countries to support an era of catastrophe. They continue to train every Sunday on what happens next.
Camacho, now director of the “Rospotts,” said the pride of his work coincided with the indelible memory of having to place “many disintegration” bodies in the capital’s baseball stadium in 1985.
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