Five days on, hopes fade in Mexico City quake rescue operations

Allegations of negligent construction and oversight began to fly Monday after deadly building collapses during Mexico's earthquake, as hope faded of finding more survivors of a disaster that killed more than 300 people.

The most-watched collapse site -- a school where 19 children were killed last week -- was built illegally on a site reserved for housing, according to local media reports.

Mexico City's mayor, the education minister, and the top official for the district all traded blame after reports that the Enrique Rebsamen primary school operated using false documents.

"If confirmed, it would be very serious," Education Minister Aurelio Nuno told TV network Televisa, saying he had ordered an investigation.

The government has also come in for criticism from anguished families of people still missing after Tuesday's earthquake.

"All they tell us are lies: that they're about to get (the missing people) out, that they're working on it, but nothing comes of it," said Anel Jimenez, 42, whose cousin Martin Estrada, a 30-year-old accountant, was inside a seven-story office building when it collapsed.

"No one from the government has come to show their face. They just send low-profile officials who always have clean helmets and shiny shoes. They just come to see what they can get out of other people's pain."

Rescue workers have now wrapped up their efforts at all but five sites in Mexico City, and the chances of pulling any more survivors from the rubble are dim.

But President Enrique Pena Nieto has been careful to insist that authorities will not send in the bulldozers to start clean-up until rescuers are absolutely certain there are no more people in the rubble.

The building where Estrada's cousin was, at 286 Alvaro Obregon Avenue in the trendy Roma neighborhood, is now the main search site. It crumpled into a tangled heap of concrete and steel with 132 people inside.

Twenty-nine people were rescued alive from the building in the first days. But no survivors have been found since.

- Wary return to 'normal' -

In Mexico City, people began to warily return to work and school.

After nearly a week of eerie quiet in the sprawling city of 20 million people, the capital's notorious traffic jams were starting to appear again.

Of the capital's 8,700 schools, 103 reopened Monday, the education ministry said. The rest were due to resume classes in the coming days, after undergoing architectural inspections.

The stakes are high for an already widely criticized government. After an earlier earthquake on September 7, all schools were given a clean bill of health.

But the city was shocked by the primary school collapse that killed 19 children and seven adults.

And an aftershock of the September 7 quake that shook Mexico City on Saturday has made the country all the more jittery.

The sense of vulnerability has only been heightened by the fact that Tuesday's earthquake struck on the anniversary of a 1985 quake that killed more than 10,000 people, the worst in Mexican history.

Mexico is particularly earthquake-prone, sitting atop five tectonic plates

- Furry survivor -

A candlelight vigil for the victims of all three recent earthquakes is planned for October 15 in Mexico City's central square.

The latest death toll stands at 324 people -- 186 of them in Mexico City.

The other deaths were recorded in the states of Morelos, Puebla, Mexico, Guerrero and Oaxaca.

No one has been pulled alive from the rubble since Friday.

But survivors of another sort were found in the rubble of two crumpled buildings on Sunday: a little white schnauzer dog and a squawking green parrot named Lucas.

Volunteer veterinarians were on hand at many search sites to give medical attention to saved pets, and to the sniffer dogs looking for survivors.

Source: AFP