Child’s Voice Heard From Quake Rubble

MEXICO CITY —  Rescue workers said they shouted through mounds of rubble late this morning and heard the faint voice of a 9-year-old boy buried 15 days under a collapsed apartment building, demolished by last month’s devastating earthquake.

Jorge Negrete, a spokesman for the workers, said rescuers asked the boy if he was there and the child replied: “Si. “

Negrete said they spoke to the boy, Luis Ramon Navarrete, at 10:45 a.m. He said the workers did not try to talk to him further because they didn’t want to exhaust him.

Negrete said the brief talk with the boy came after the discovery of a cistern in the debris. He said it is trickling water to where the child is believed trapped.

Mexico City Police Chief Ramon Mota Sanchez, who spent most of the night at the site, said workers first made contact with the child by knocking at 4:10 a.m.

He said rescue workers, including a team from the Red Cross, have dug five tunnels and are concentrating on two of them.

Three rescue squads have been working since Sunday to reach Luis.

The boy was at home in his family’s apartment with his grandfather, Luis Maldonado, 57, when the three-story building collapsed in the Sept. 19 earthquake, which measured 8.1 on the Richter scale. Workers at the site say it is believed that the boy’s grandfather did not survive.