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Mexico Mourns After Quake: ‘We Have No Idea How We Are Going to Rebuild’ - The New York Times

posted onSeptember 11, 2017
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Article snippet: ASUNCIÓN IXTALTEPEC, Mexico — The death toll from Mexico’s strongest earthquake in living memory rose to 90 on Sunday, as the people of southern Oaxaca State mourned their dead and rescue workers began assessing the damage in small towns where dust still hung in the air. The state of Oaxaca was hit the hardest, with 71 dead, said Águeda Robles, a spokeswoman for the state civil protection agency. Another 15 were reported to have died in Chiapas, the state to Oaxaca’s southeast, with four fatalities in neighboring Tabasco State. More than two days after the quake struck late Thursday, violent aftershocks continued to jolt the largest city in the region, Juchitán de Zaragoza, and the surrounding towns on Sunday. In Asunción Ixtaltepec, about five miles away, search dogs clambered over rubble with their handlers on Sunday, looking for signs of life. For those whose worst fears were confirmed, there were funerals, with processions haltingly making their way to cemeteries to the traditional sounds of Oaxaca’s drums and trumpets. On Sunday morning, Lourdes Pérez buried the son she had frantically tried to save when the top floor of his house collapsed before her eyes. As she stood before the ruin of his house in the afternoon, the destruction mirrored her own devastation. Ms. Pérez had been outside her own home, opposite the two-story house where her son, Eduardo Peralta, 33, lived with his young family, when the earthquake shook the ground beneath her. The Peralta fam... Link to the full article to read more

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