23 kids plus 20 adults died in a school that was flattened in Mexico yesterday

[malaise]

THey are trying to rescue one young girl right now

[FLPanhandle]

1. As a parent, this is horrible to hear

I can't think of anything worse than dealing with the death of your child.

[Skittles]

3. this is horrible for anyone to hear

[spanone]

2. so sad.

8~(

[dembotoz]

4. i would hope we are sending resources...understand irma and harvey and maria all but

i would suppose earthquakes require some stuff that hurricanes do not.

[cloudbase]

13. Mexico has an excellent earthquake rescue organization.

Their website is www.topos.mx.

[Solly Mack]

5. K&R

[cwydro]

6. Earthquakes frighten me more than pretty much anything.

Tornadoes too.

I've ridden out hurricanes, but I would run like hell from an earthquake. Unfortunately no warning for those.

[Beaverhausen]

7. That's the problem - no warning for earthquakes

We can prepare as much as we can for the aftermath but being somewhere safe and stocked when it happens is just luck.

And no, I'm not saying tornadoes and hurricanes are not just as bad, but in most cases there is warning for those.

[cwydro]

9. Yes, exactly.

I'm actually reading an old book about the San Francisco earthquake way back in the day. Scary stuff.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

10. Actually, Mexico City had a little bit of a warning.

I think around 70 second. Though this video it seems a bit longer.

Not much but better than nothing.

The sensors on the coast where the fault is located gives the city a bit of a warning. I think the idea is the warning is transmitted faster than the shock wave travels in from the coast.

[suffragette]

21. Likely saved some lives. Of course, Trump is cutting funding for these systems here.

https://upload.democraticunderground.com/10029157077

[LeftInTX]

20. It is counter-intuitive, but the best advice is to go outside during a quake.

If that isn't an option, duck and cover.....

[malaise]

25. Same here and it is the lack of warnings

They pulled out some kids alive -that's the good news

[smirkymonkey]

8. How horrible!

Mother nature has been brutal lately.

[sandensea]

11. Dear God.

This is reminiscent of one of the big scandals that swirled around the government's response to the 1985 earthquake.

Knowing that they were overdue for a major quake, city officials had recently distributed preparedness pamphlets to local schools.

Public and private schools both got them - but there was a difference: some told students to duck beside their desks, and some told them to duck under them.

Suffice it to say, as the schools pancaked in the tremors all those who ducked under their desks were crushed to death; those who did so beside their desks largely survived, sheltered by their very desks which acted as pillars holding up collapsed ceilings just above the kids' heads.

The scandal was that the ones that suggested the kids duck under the desks were sent to public schools (whose students are mainly dark-skinned and poor), while private schools got the other edition.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

14. That doesn't quite make sense to me.

If you duck under a desk that act as a pillar holding up the collapsed ceilings, wouldn't those same ceilings collapse totally alongside the desks?

[MissB]

15. It is thought to provide a bit of space as it collapses

The space is along side rather than under. The desk (or bed or table) has some structural integrity to it and some of it should be sort of still available as things collapse on top of it, providing a small space next to it.

It used to be that the advice was to stand in a door frame. It's really hard to fight that training - rolling out of bed and laying beside it or standing next to a table is the current advice.

[sandensea]

16. The desks' steel frame usually held up under the weight of the ceiling.

At least enough to save the child ducking beside them. They'd be trapped and terrified (and in some cases killed by smoke inhalation); but, more often than not, they'd be alive.

Ducking under these desks, on the other hand, usually meant having their ribcages crushed by the weight of the pancaking reinforced concrete structure over said desks.

There were many exceptions to both these scenarios; but that's what typically happened. In any case the fact that private schools (with mostly white, middle-class children) got one set of instructions - and public schools, the other far more lethal set - suggested gross negligence at best, and genocidal bad faith at worst (a distinct possibility in Latin America).

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

17. I still don't get it.

If the collapsing ceiling crushes the desk, wouldn't that same pancaking reinforced concrete fall all the way to the floor alongside the desks? But you do say "The desks' steel frame usually held up under the weight of the ceiling." If it does that, the space under those desk should be free.

[Orrex]

18. Some of presumably falls in blocks and chunks

The hope is that the desks will brace against these, at least long enough to protect against the immediate crush.

Now, if the ceiling is pulverized to small, basketball-sized bits, then of course the desks won't stop all of them.


But if it's a beam falling across six desks, there's a fair chance that it won't make it all the way to the floor, at least not at first.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

19. The beam falling across six desks is a good visual.

If the desks support the weight of those beams, then the space under the desk will be relatively clear. As well as the space under said beam between those desks.

I wonder if the essential difference about poor kids and rich kids is more a case of the schools for the rich kids were better constructed in the first place. So those ceilings collapsed totally, crushing everything underneath. The rich kids' schools didn't collapse completely and so there was space left, alongside and under the desks for survival.

I simply cannot picture a ceiling collapse that would crush desks and leave the space alongside free.

[Not Ruth]

26. What kid has a steel frame desk?

[LeftInTX]

23. We did the duck and cover stuff for everything in the 60s

Earthquakes on the west coast and Japan - tornadoes in NJ and midwest

We never did anything next to our desks -always under

[saidsimplesimon]

12. This is heartbreaking as a parent.

Instead of promising to "be there" from It, will the con stand up to the challenge like a man or slink into his ignorant, spoiled brat pout. After all, these "boring" events take away from those coveted ratings.

[suffragette]

22. This is tragic.

[aikoaiko]

24. Such sad news.