Boy recalls escape from Mexico City school _ and those lost
A favorite teacher, a janitor always friendly with the kids, the two women who patrolled the halls and greeted children at the school’s gates, a best friend’s little sister. These people feared or confirmed dead Wednesday were top on the mind of 12-year-old Luis Carlos Herrera Tome.
The Enrique Rebsamen school, the Mexico City private school he attended for eight years, had fallen around him less than 24 hours earlier amid a magnitude 7.1 earthquake. The only thing he wanted to do was go back, to help somehow.
His mother, Norma Tome, said he wouldn’t be allowed into the site, it was too dangerous. But they went to the school anyway. It took them an hour to go three blocks because they kept bumping into people they knew. With each encounter came a halt to exchange information about names, hospitals, funeral plans, even the school’s layout.
When a couple asked Luis Carlos to describe for the umpteenth time what he saw and how he escaped, he hugged his arms tightly across his chest and turned away when he began tearing up.
Luis Carlos and his mother scanned handwritten lists of the missing and those taken to hospitals, wincing at names they recognized.
The earthquake, centered in nearby Puebla state, killed at least 223 people across Mexico, including 21 children and four adults in the school. A dramatic operation continued Wednesday as searchers pried into the rubble looking for three people still missing. Federal Education Secretary Aurelio Nuno said 11 people have been rescued.
Hugs were offered and accepted, but Luis Carlos felt helpless outside the security barriers playing the events of the previous day back.
He said he was in English class Tuesday when everything started moving. He headed for the door leaving his backpack, books, pencils and everything behind.
First he turned to the school’s main staircase, a concrete structure toward the front of the building.
« I saw that the ceiling started to break apart so I turned around, » he said.
« I grabbed my friends and we took off running, » he added, showing how they linked arms.
They ran together for another staircase. The building continued shaking violently and one friend fell on the stairs.
« It moved a lot. I braced myself and cleared like five stairs in one jump, » he said.
Dust falling from walls and the ceiling made it hard to see but he could make out students with cut and bleeding arms. Everyone was crying and screaming, he said.
The students who exited with Luis Carlos quickly realized they were trapped even once outside. Residents of a neighboring apartment building broke through a fence atop a tall wall separating the properties and lowered a ladder so the students could climb out.
On his way out, Luis Carlos saw his favorite janitor with rubble on his back apparently dead. In the street, ambulances were arriving and teachers stained with blood were crying.
« It was chaos, » he said. But Luis Carlos had only one thought looking back at the collapsed school: Where was his little brother?
The brother — 7-year-old Jose Raul Herrera Tome — had been in a classroom in a building right next to his brother’s.
The younger boy told his mom later that a classmate was the first to scream: « It’s shaking! »
He said the students heard no alarm even though it occurred only two hours after their school, and every other one in Mexico, had done an evacuation drill to mark the 32nd anniversary of the 1985 earthquake that killed thousands in Mexico City.
« That’s what makes me mad, » the older brother said of not hearing an alarm. « How many seconds were lost there? »
Jose Raul also ran first for the big staircase at the front of the school, but stopped when he saw it beginning to crumble. He ran back to his classroom and waited there with his classmates until the shaking stopped.
The boys’ mother said a multipurpose room near the school’s front staircase was where most of the dead had been recovered.
« ‘Mom, I saw a girl go down because she was crushed,' » Tome recalled her younger son telling her after he escaped the building. « He cried a lot for that and said, ‘I couldn’t save her.' »
When Jose Raul made it to the street he looked back at the school and said, « My brother, my brother, » Tome said.
The brothers hugged when they found each other across the street.
« We cried. He was my biggest worry, » Luis Carlos said.
On Wednesday, Luis Carlos helped pass water and bandages for an hour, and answered frantic parents asking if he had seen their kids. He never let go of his brother.
The family planned to go later in the day to a wake for Claudia Ramirez, the second-grade teacher who Jose Raul adored.
Ramirez was « one of those rare exceptional teachers — unique ones who leave their imprint on the lives of the children and the parents, » Tome said.
Later, Luis Carlos returned to the terrifying moments during the earthquake, which occurred just a few minutes before he was supposed to move to his biology class. He had remembered that they hadn’t finished their lab on Friday and were scheduled to be back in the lab Tuesday in the part of the school that collapsed.
« I don’t know if I would be here, » he said, suddenly feeling the weight of the quake’s timing.

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The Trump administration is considering a further reduction in the number of refugees allowed into the United States.
President Donald Trump is considering a further reduction in the number of refugees allowed into the United States as the administration works to re-shape American immigration policy, officials said Wednesday.
Trump, who has already slashed refugee admissions once since taking office, is now weighing limiting even further the number of refugees allowed into the country in the next fiscal year.
But as is often the case with the Trump administration, Cabinet officials are divided as they weigh the costs and potential security risks associated with the program.
The Department of Homeland Security has been pushing for a reduction beyond the 50,000 mark set by Trump earlier this year as part of his travel ban executive orders — a number that is already the lowest in modern American history. In a proposal submitted late last week, the department called for a reduction to 40,000 refugees in the next fiscal year, citing concerns about its workload and ability to adequately vet those seeking entry.
The State Department, which oversees the program, has formally recommended that the number be kept at 50,000, according to Trump administration officials who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss internal deliberations. Agencies had been given until the close of business Wednesday to submit formal recommendations for consideration.
State Department officials would have been inclined to set their recommendation higher, several of the people said, but were taking their cues from the president’s executive order and felt that 50,000 was the highest number that would be palatable to him.
Trump has until Oct. 1, the start of the new fiscal year, to determine how many refugees to admit under the Refugee Act of 1980. Trump is expected to consider the issue over the weekend, after he finishes up at the U. N. General Assembly in New York, one White House official said.
The U. S. welcomed 84,995 refugees in fiscal year 2016, and former President Barack Obama had wanted to raise that number to 110,000 in 2017.
Trump has made limiting immigration the centerpiece of his agenda. He temporarily banned visitors from a handful of Muslim-majority nations, has revoked an Obama-era executive action protecting young immigrants from deportation and insists he’ll build a wall along the southern border.
During his campaign, Trump pledged to « stop the massive inflow of refugees » and warned that terrorists were smuggling themselves into naive countries by posing as refugees fleeing war-torn Syria.
« Thousands of refugees are being admitted with no way to screen them and are instantly made eligible for welfare and free health care, even as our own veterans, our great, great veterans, die while they’re waiting online for medical care that they desperately need, » Trump said last October.
Instead, Trump has advocated keeping refugees closer to their homes.
In a speech to the United Nations on Tuesday, Trump thanked Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon for taking in hundreds of thousands of refugees from the Syrian conflict, and described the United States as a « compassionate nation » that has spent « billions and billions of dollars in helping to support this effort. »
« We seek an approach to refugee resettlement that is designed to help these horribly treated people, and which enables their eventual return to their home countries to be part of the rebuilding process, » he said, arguing that, for the cost of resettling one refugee in the United States, the U. S. can assist more than 10 migrants in their home regions.
Advocates say that misses the point.
« I think that these comments show a basic misunderstanding of the refugee crisis, » said Jen Smyers, who helps run the immigration and refugee program at Church World Service, one of nine organizations that work to resettle refugees in the U. S. She said the safe re-integration of refugees into their home countries is always the preferred outcome, followed by integration in a nearby country that shares a refugee’s language and culture. Resettlement is a last resort when those options are impossible.
Refugees already face an extensive backlog and waiting periods that can take years. Smyers said that after Trump’s executive order, she had to tell refugees in the pipeline they’d be waiting even longer.
« It’s devastating for refugees who are overseas, » she said.
Stacie Blake, of the U. S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, said the proposed cutbacks were especially concerning given the migrant crises affecting so many parts of the word, including the Rohingya Muslim refugees fleeing Myanmar. She said Trump’s move could prompt other nations to « back out » as well.
White House spokeswoman Kelly Love said in a statement that the administration’s approach to refugee resettlement « is unwavering » and would be « guided by the safety and security of the American people, the protection of U. S. taxpayers, and the application of U. S. resources in a manner that stretches our dollars to help the most people. »
DHS spokesman David Lapan said that in setting the admissions ceiling, the agency would take into account the « workload capacity of all program partners, including the vetting agencies » as well as national security interests.
Simon Henshaw, the top State Department official for refugees, said the decision was ultimately Trump’s.
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