Scramble on for quake survivors

Cheers, applause echo as rescuers pull injured person from building

MEXICO CITY - When the earthquake hit, it sent panicked people running into the street but many weren't so lucky. The dust settled minutes later to reveal a landscape of flattened buildings and rubble in the heart of Mexico City.

"Awful. I think it was one of the strongest we've felt. I don't know what magnitude, but it was awful," said Pedro Cruz Martinez, a public servant cradling his little girl, after joining the rush of fearful parents to a local school.

After the screams and the shock, people quickly set to work digging for survivors.

In a scene reproduced in streets across the city center, dozens of people scrabbled with bare hands to remove rubble from atop a concertinaed building as they waited for specialized machinery to arrive.

Central areas like Roma, Condesa and Doctores appeared to have taken the brunt of the magnitude-7.1 quake.

Several buildings were completely flattened in Roma, popular for its bars and restaurants and one of the neighborhoods hit hardest by the 1985 earthquake that shattered large swathes of this city and killed at least 10,000 - 32 years ago to the day.

Amid the tears and terror, there were small victories.

Cheers and applause echoed around the crowded Calle Alvaro Obregon in Roma as rescuers managed to pull someone from under the rubble.

There remained a sense that such moments would be rare, however.

In other buildings in the same area, volunteers joined the authorities to remove debris. One of them held a sign with the word "silence" in order to be able to hear people who may still be alive.

Dozens of buildings collapsed in Mexico City - home to about 20 million people - as the overall death surpassed 200 early on Wednesday in the capital city and across a swath of central states.

Authorities asked for help from volunteers and for water. Some police officers came through the crowd carrying containers of water.

Medics set up makeshift field hospitals in the streets, treating people for broken limbs and crush injuries.

Many people lay on stretchers, with medics holding strips of cardboard boxes over victims' heads to protect them from the sun.

"Darling, if you want to help, go ahead. Just give me your glasses and be careful," a woman told her doctor husband as they gazed at buildings reduced to rubble, the intimacy of people's homes laid bare as curtains swayed in buildings without walls.

Police called for calm and cordoned off streets with grotesquely twisted buildings, their reinforcing steel poking out from concrete.

People hugged and comforted each other amid anxiety about loved ones. Many stood around in a daze, not sure where to go or what to do.

But everyone was staying in the streets, afraid to go home.

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto was en route to the southern state of Oaxaca to supervise recovery efforts there in the wake of the Sept 7 quake, but his plane turned around and returned to the capital when he learned buildings had collapsed.

However, the plane was unable to land at Mexico City's airport, where operations were suspended as officials inspected airstrips and buildings for damage. Since then, the airport has resumed operation.

Israel said on Wednesday it was sending a team of 70 soldiers including engineers and search-and-rescue specialists to Mexico.

Meanwhile, the tremor left the building that housed the Philippine embassy crumbling and badly damaged, but the Philippines' foreign affairs department said no Filipino casualties have been reported so far.

Afp - Xinhua - Philippine Daily Inquirer/ann

Soldiers, rescuers and volunteers work at a collapsed building after the earthquake in Mexico City, on Tuesday. The magnitude-7.1 quake killed more than 200 people.Ginnette Riquelme / Reuters