MEXICO CITY (AP) — In a hospital room blocks away from where he survived 26 hours buried under the rubble of his nine-story apartment building, Jose Luis Ponce lay sedated and on a respirator, alive but with fractures to multiple bones and damage to his lungs and a kidney.
“You said you would be with me always,” his daughter, Claudia Ponce, 30, told him. “Now is not the moment to leave.”
Across town in Mexico City, 58-year-old Julieta Calderas was also clinging to life Saturday morning. Crushed by a human stampede at a popular mall during Tuesday’s harrowing 7.1-magnitude quake, doctors warned the family she was essentially brain dead. Still, her niece refused to believe she might not leave the hospital alive.
“Death is a natural part of life,” Rosangel Aguilar said, sitting on a concrete bench with other families outside Xoco General Hospital. “But we cannot accept it.”
Full story: AP News