We Need Help: Mexicans Count the Cost of Earthquake Henry Romero - Reuters
go to original March 22, 2012

A 7.4-magnitude quake centered near Oaxaca didn't cause heavy damage, but was felt across a huge area of the country. Telemundo's Julio Vaqueiro reports.

HUIXTEPEC, Mexico - Dozens of families cleared rubble from their destroyed homes in southwestern Mexico on Wednesday following a major 7.4-magnitude earthquake that caused landslides, knocked down school walls and cracked a church tower.

At least 100 houses collapsed and 1,000 were damaged near the epicenter of Tuesday's quake in the municipality of Ometepec in Guerrero state, said Jorge Catalan, an official from the Ministry of Social Development.

No one was killed, but many residents, terrified by repeated aftershocks, spent the night outside and officials said they were preparing shelters and food for those who lost their homes.

Eleven people were injured in the tremor, the strongest to hit the country since the devastating 8.1-magnitude quake of 1985 that killed thousands in Mexico City.

The hardest-hit place in Guerrero was Huixtepec, a village of a few thousand people, said Admiral Sergio Lara, the local navy commander. About 40 percent of its homes were severely damaged, and only about one in five was unscathed, he said.

'I thought the world was going to end'

Standing outside the rubble of his own home and those of his extended family, 37-year-old farmer Amancio Morales said he expected to be homeless for the foreseeable future.

"Here we only make 100 pesos ($7.87) a day. To rebuild everything - we just don't have enough," he said.

All 50 or so members of his wider family were now sleeping outdoors, he added.

Large boulders from landslides blocked the road to the nearby small town of Paso Cuaulote, where nearly all 150 villagers, who grow beans and corn, were hit.

"I thought the world was going to end," said farmer Vicente Santiago, 30, surveying a crumbled wall in his father's cinder block home. His father, taking a nap when the quake hit, escaped unharmed even after the roof caved in.

Maria Lopez, 33, fled her home with her 2-week-old baby boy and spent the night by the river with the rest of the town.

"Rocks were falling from the mountainside onto the house," said Lopez, as she clutched her baby outside her seriously cracked mud-brick home.

Rubble-strewn classrooms

Students picked their way through rubble-strewn classrooms on Wednesday at one of the three primary schools damaged in the municipality. "The children were shouting. We had to evacuate," said teacher Abel Hernandez.

In the nearby town of Igualapa, one of the towers on the colonial-era church crumbled, although locals were still holding a service inside.

In Mexico City, residents were largely spared, with only small cracks in buildings and minor damage to one subway line and a bridge. Mexico City is about 200 miles north-northeast of the epicenter.

The capital's repair bill for the quake, which was felt as far away as Guatemala should come in under $2 million, Mayor Marcelo Ebrard said.

The type of the earthquake - it shook the city from side to side rather than up and down - and better construction regulations since 1985 saved the city from more serious damage, Ebrard told national television.

That was scant consolation to villagers in hilly parts of Guerrero left without a roof above their heads.

'It was so cold'

Among the locals forced to sleep outdoors by the quake in Huixtepec was a woman of about 90, Angela Hernandez.

"It was so cold last night," she said. "We need help - wood or cement or anything."

There have been 15 earthquakes of magnitude 7 or stronger since 1973 within 310 miles of Tuesday's quake.

Mexico City, built on a lake bed, was badly damaged in 1985 when an 8.1 earthquake killed at least 10,000 people. In past years, Guerrero has suffered several severe earthquakes, including a 7.9 in 1957 which killed an estimated 68 people, and a 7.4 in 1995 which left three dead.

A magnitude-8.0 quake near Manzanillo on Mexico's central Pacific coast killed 51 people in 1995 and a magintude-7.5 quake killed at least 20 people in the southern state of Oaxaca in 1999.

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