Quake Toll Still Rising
The death toll from Tuesday's earthquake in Mexico has risen to 17 and it's expected to go up.
The temblor, which measured 6.7 on the Richter scale, was centered in the historic city of Puebla, listed by the United Nations as a cultural landmark. A state architect, surveying cracks in graceful arches, says some of the damage is irreversible.
"Some of the damage is irreversible in the loss of stonework and tiles," said architect Federico Bautista Alonso, who estimated that 250 buildings, including modern structures, were damaged in the city, which draws tourists from around the world.
Other historic buildings damaged in Puebla include the San Agustin church, with a bell tower cut in half; the church of La Soledad; and the neoclassical city hall, which lost an entire floor.
Colonial-era buildings were damaged in other parts of central Mexico as well, including the cathedral of Cuernavaca, founded in the 16th century.
Puebla's Council of the Historic Center, a neighborhood association, told Bautista the damage in the city could total almost $25 million.
About 40 residents of five apartment buildings destroyed or heavily damaged in the quake stood in the street Wednesday, impatiently waiting for word from the government about when they could recover their belongings.
Police stood guard behind a closed wrought-iron fence in a courtyard leading to their homes.
The jolt was felt in five Mexican states, knocking out power and telephone lines and causing landslides, reports CBS News Correspondent Adrienne Bard.
Mexico's National Seismological Service said the earthquake was centered near Huajuapan de Leon, 80 miles south of Puebla. The U.S. Geological Survey calculated the epicenter near the city of Tehuacan.
President Ernesto Zedillo declared the state of Puebla a disaster area after the Tuesday afternoon earthquake.
State officials said 4,000 people had been left temporarily homeless by the quake. Thousands more were forced from their damaged homes in Oaxaca and Veracruz states, and in Mexico City.
At a local hospital, Teachers College librarian Josefina Walles Morales, 53, lay in an intensive care ward with a broken leg, fractured vertebrae, a punctured lung and bruises all over.
The brick ceiling of the 19th century library fell on her. She called her survival a miracle.