- COLIMA, Mexico (Reuters)
- A powerful earthquake shook central and western Mexico, killing at least
23 people on the Pacific coast, a death toll that could rise further on
Wednesday once the full extent of the damage is revealed.
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- Emergency workers struggled through the night to treat
dozens of injured and pull victims from the rubble of collapsed homes and
buildings in Colima, a city of some 125,000 people just inland from the
Pacific coast.
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- Colima Gov. Fernando Moreno said at least 21 people were
killed in the state after the quake struck late Tuesday. Two others were
killed in the neighboring state of Jalisco.
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- "They were crushed, or they suffocated when walls
and houses collapsed on top of them," he said on Wednesday morning,
adding that the death toll could still rise further.
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- "Since we were without electricity for five hours,
we haven't been able to make a thorough check," he told Reuters.
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- Dazed residents slept in the open air or sat in chairs
in the street on a balmy night, too scared of possible after-shocks to
go back into their homes.
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- "There are many houses that have fallen down and
many buildings destroyed," Red Cross volunteer Marta Requena said
in Colima near the epicenter.
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- "People are coming to give us medicine from their
homes but it is not enough, we need more," Requena told Reuters.
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- Deaths were also reported in other towns across Colima
state, and emergency services said a woman and a baby also died in the
neighboring state of Jalisco.
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- The Seismological Service at Mexico City's UNAM University
said the quake struck shortly after 8:00 p.m. and measured 7.6. The U.S.
Geological Survey put the quake's magnitude at 7.8.
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- The hardest hit area was the center of Colima city, where
homes and walls simply crumbled under the quake's power. It sent panicked
residents rushing into the streets in tears.
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- Colima is one of Mexico's smallest states and is devoted
mostly to agriculture. It is also home to the active Volcano of Fire which
last erupted in 1998.
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- PANIC IN MEXICO CITY
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- The quake rocked homes and offices across central and
western Mexico and caused panic in Mexico City, 310 miles to the east,
where power was briefly cut and buildings cracked.
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- It brought back terrifying memories of a 1985 quake of
8.1 in Mexico City that killed more than 10,000 people.
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- "I was putting my son to bed when everything started
to move. We ran out with all our neighbors. I was just thinking of '85,
the earthquake of '85," said Beatriz Reyes, a resident of the central
Mexico City neighborhood of La Roma, which was one of the hardest hit in
1985.
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- On Mexico City's central boulevard, Reforma, two twenty-story
buildings, the Sevilla Palace Hotel and a government building, bumped together
during the quake, said witnesses who briefly evacuated both buildings.
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- But the city dodged a bullet, with only a few dozen people
treated for shock.
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