Earthquake Aid Pours Into Mexico
Offers and pledges of aid poured into Colima, Mexico, which suffered a powerful earthquake Tuesday night.
President Vicente Fox Wednesday attended the wake of a young mother who died when the walls of her fragile adobe home collapsed. Fox pledged to rebuild all the homes that fell; some 500 were completely leveled.
The Mexican army is handing out food and blankets, and manning shelters in Colima, reports CBS News Correspondent Adrienne Bard. The government hospital that was damaged set up a makeshift clinic outside under plastic tarps, but the lack of power is hampering rescue and relief efforts.
Though Mexico hasn't yet requested help from abroad, the U.S. government has sent disaster experts to help assess the damage.
In California, aid began pouring in Wednesday from Mexican migrants hailing from Colima, which in 1995 suffered a magnitude-8.0 earthquake that killed 49 people and injured at least 100. Nearly half the estimated 50,000 migrants from Colima live in Southern California, according to the Mexican Consulate in Los Angeles.
If people in the U.S. want to do something to help, reports Bard, they should call the Mexican Consul nearest to their city, and find out how they can help. Bank accounts have been set up also abroad for people who want to donate money to help the earthquake victims.
Vicente Rodriguez sat beside his mother's coffin, barely noticing the crews noisily shoveling away the remains of homes leveled by a powerful earthquake that killed at least 25 people in Mexico.
"I did what I could to save her but it was useless," he said as friends and relatives embraced him at an outdoor memorial for 83-year-old Maria Rodriguez Macia.
Rodriguez, 53, was already in mourning, praying for a deceased friend at a neighbor's home Tuesday night, when the 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck, shaking the walls, cutting power and causing the earth to ripple like water beneath him.
Like thousands of others, he ran outside, stumbling several blocks down the darkened streets to find both his mother and sister trapped beneath a mountain of earth, metal and stone that had been their humble adobe house.
"I was able to get my sister out, but couldn't find my mother," Rodriguez said. "She was trapped behind her and by the time I got to her she no longer had a pulse."
Maria Rodriguez was one of at least 25 people killed in the quake, which injured 300 people and damaged or destroyed thousands of homes.
The quake occurred about 8 p.m., reports Bard, so most people were able to quickly run out of their houses, in some cases, turning around to see the structures collapse completely. If it had happened later on when people were sleeping, they might not have been so fortunate.
One of the worst-hit areas was Colima's historic downtown, where adobe houses built 50 to 100 years ago were pulverized. On Filameno Medina street, where Rodriguez's mother lived for more than 75 years, three of the 25 houses crashed to the ground, reduced to piles of dirt and cement.
Others were rendered uninhabitable after the quake ripped away large chunks of brick and tore cracks that stretched the lengths of plaster walls.
In nearby Guadalajara — Mexico's second-largest city — bells from one of the colonial city's ancient churches fell from the tower and dozens of homes partially collapsed.
Tuesday's quake also was felt strongly in the popular Pacific Coast resorts of Puerto Vallarta and Manzanilla, where many American retirees live. The Americans were shaken up, but no deaths or injuries were reported.
"We have a warden system, which is a network of U.S. citizens who volunteer to check on the welfare and whereabouts of their fellow citizens, and we have had no negative reports from them," U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Sherry Feeley said.
Greece's foreign ministry offered to send rescue teams to Mexico and pay out $212,000 in aid, while U.N. Secretary-general Kofi Annan issued a statement saying that the United Nations "stands ready to assist" Mexican authorities if they requested it.