MEXICO CITY — For Mexico City, Hurricane Katrina had strong echoes of
the earthquake 20 years ago that toppled buildings, hit the poor hardest
and shook Mexicans' faith in government.
The skyline is soaring as the capital marks the 20th anniversary Monday
of the earthquake that killed at least 9,500 people and leveled whole
sections of the city. But some scars are still visible and scientists
say the city may be unprepared for the next quake.
"That the poor were the ones that couldn't evacuate (from New Orleans)
is something that caught our attention," said Luis Wintergerst, the
city's director of civil protection. The 1985 quake also hit the poor
hardest, he said.
In the quake's aftermath, civic and neighborhood groups sprang to the
rescue, disgusted with the government's weak response. They gave birth
to a spirit of grass-roots involvement in public life and politics that
remains a source of national pride.
Araceli Santamaria, born the day before the quake and pulled from the
rubble of a collapsed hospital, has no doubt about how people will
respond to another disaster.
"Are people ready? Morally, yes," said Santamaria, a college student
whose education is subsidized by a trust from foreign donors dedicated
to 13 surviving "miracle babies" pulled by volunteers from two collapsed
hospitals.
Mexican authorities don't have the personnel or enough training to deal
with another 1985-magnitude quake, and ordinary people may have no
choice but to pitch in, said Roberto Hernandez, president of Topos
Mexico, or Mexico Moles, a search-and-rescue group. Organized by young
people to dig through the rubble of 1985, it still exists, ready to
pitch in if disaster strikes again.
after Hurricane Katrina but never got a response. However, Mexican Army
troops traveled to U.S. soil for the first time in 159 years to help
care for hurricane victims, and a Mexican navy ship sailed to the
Mississippi coast to help.
Lying in a flood- and earthquake-prone valley, Mexico City has rebuilt
itself more than once since the Spanish arrived in the 16th century.
Flooded in 1629, it remained under water for nearly three years. While
the Spanish fled their homes, more than 30,000 Indians died.
Today, high-rises have sprouted on the city's western outskirts, and the
historic center is recovering some of its 1950s splendor with the
addition of a high-rise hotel, foreign ministry headquarters, a
courthouse and luxury apartments.
The capital's high-tech skyscrapers include the 55-story Torre Mayor,
Latin America's tallest, with a foundation 280 feet below ground and 98
giant quake absorbers.
Julieta Guadalupe, 29, remembers the floor moving and the walls cracking
on the morning of Sept. 19, 1985, before her family abandoned a
teetering building.
She is still in a camp built for earthquake refugees on an abandoned
lot, sharing a one-room tin-and-asbestos shack with her husband and two
daughters. Other inhabitants long ago moved to permanent city-built
apartments, but they are too small to accommodate offspring families
like Guadalupe's.
"I'm hoping they build here soon," she said. "The room is very small."
Even now, Mexico City hasn't entirely cleaned up. In the Roma
neighborhood, condemned buildings and rubble fill gaps between
townhouses left intact. On Chihuahua Street, squatters and dogs live on
a pile of twisted steel and concrete that once housed offices of
Mexico's state oil monopoly.
"We came here because we don't have anywhere else to live," said Carlos
Chavez, 36, who washes car windshields for spare change.
Rodolfo de la Torre, an expert on poverty at the Iberoamerican
University in Mexico City, said the earthquake helped clear out derelict
buildings and replace them with sturdier ones. But although building
codes were tightened, enforcement is bedeviled by corruption .
And as the poor multiply, they are moving into illegal structures on
quake-prone land.
The problem with earthquakes is that no one can be sure where it's
dangerous to build, said de la Torre. "Earthquakes not only generate
tragedy but also information," he said. The answers "may have to be
revealed through another earthquake."
