19S
It happened two years ago, but it’s fresh enough that I still jump when I hear a car alarm.
Last week marked the second anniversary of the 7.1 magnitude earthquake struck Mexico City on the afternoon of September 19, 2017, toppling some 40 buildings and killing more than 200 people in the city. The quake struck on the anniversary of another much more powerful earthquake that devastated the city back in 1985. That quake, with a magnitude of 8.1, released 30 times more energy than the more recent quake and killed anywhere from 12,000 to 35,000 people—to this day, nobody knows for sure.
The morning of September 19, 2017 was the same as any other day. Once I made it to the office, my colleagues and I began to whine that we’d have to scurry down 20 flights of stairs for the citywide evacuation drill that’s held every September 19 to commemorate the 1985 quake. When our building’s PA system sounded, we ambled to the emergency stairway and made our way to the street below, where we waited impatiently for building management to give us permission to return to our offices. “Are we done yet?” many of us moaned, eager to get back to ticking items off our daily to-do lists.
Two hours later, as I sat in a meeting, our office tower began to sway. We scrambled to the elevator lobby, where we sheltered in place as the building began to pitch ever more violently, like a ship on the open sea. Panic. Cries. An interminable wait. Finally, when the PA system directed us to evacuate the building, we wasted no time.
After evacuating the building , my colleagues and I were rattled by the quake, yet we had no real idea as to the extent of the damage. We waited in the hot sun for three hours, checking our phones for information and trying to get in touch with our loved ones.
We waited outside for three hours until building management told evacuees that each tenant could send representatives to collect the personal belongings left behind in our rush to escape. Once a colleague returned with my laptop and backpack, it was time to finally leave and to head out into the city.
I’d initially accepted a ride to my boyfriend’s place from a co-worker, but decided to get out and walk after advancing only five blocks in 20 minutes. Power was out across much of the city and, given that neither public transportation nor traffic lights were working, streets were gridlocked. I’d later learn that there had been a spike in assaults on drivers in the first hours after the quake as opportunistic criminals targeted those unlucky enough to be trapped in traffic. So much for our shared humanity.
I made my way on foot to Colonia Cuauhtémoc, the neighbourhood where my boyfriend lived in the heart of Mexico City. I saw buckled streets and piles of rubble, though I soon realized that much of this destruction was actually gentrification-fuelled construction debris rather than earthquake damage. I felt a bit better, until I reached Ismael’s block, cordoned by yellow tape. It looked like the eight-storey building across the street would collapse at any moment.
Once inside, I joined Ismael and two other shell-shocked friends who had gathered in his apartment. Nobody wanted to be alone. We anxiously posted status updates on Facebook and checked our Twitter feeds for information, only to encounter one disturbing video after another—each more horrifying than the last—showing scenes of urban carnage. Destruction was far and wide, with collapsed buildings reported as far north as Lindavista and as far south as Coapa—a distance of 30 km. Neighbourhoods devastated by the 1985 quake, like Roma and Condesa, were pummelled once again, while other parts of the city like Del Valle, which was largely unscathed in 1985, saw numerous apartment towers fall.
I couldn’t tell how the city’s historic centre had fared, and I was growing increasingly nervous since that’s where I live. I needed to get home to see what had become of my neighbourhood and my apartment.
As we walked the 4 km to my apartment, Ismael and I passed many damaged structures like this building in Colonia Juárez. It was one of the most unsettling walks I’ve taken in my life.
I finally arrived at my place some six hours after the quake had struck.
“Ready?” asked Ismael, who had walked with me to my place so I wouldn’t have to face it alone. I unlocked my door and we stepped inside. Greeted by broken crockery and tumbled books, I saw my houseplants naked atop potting mix on the living room floor. What a relief! This was so much better than I’d expected! I wouldn’t notice the broken windows and numerous cracked walls until I returned in the light of day.
Feeling overwhelmed and impotent in the face of disaster, Ismael and I made sandwiches for the volunteers working to free quake victims. I still don’t know what prompted me to take this photo—though the effects of shock likely played a role.
Now it was time for me to retrieve clothes and the other things I’d need while I sheltered at Ismael’s place, as his building had already been declared structurally sound by the authorities. I no longer felt safe in my familiar old neighbourhood, especially after passing the chaotic scene of a four-story building that had pancaked just three blocks from home. But instead of collecting my things, I looked around my apartment for anything useful for the rescue effort. I had an extra lantern and I could buy some batteries. But what more could I do?
“Let’s make sandwiches,” said Ismael, seemingly out of nowhere, reading my thoughts. Sandwiches—for the volunteers digging through the rubble in my backyard. “Yeah,” I said. “Sandwiches.”
We had to visit four different convenience stores to find enough supplies to assemble four dozen sandwiches. Already, food supplies were vanishing from the corner shops, but we managed to buy everything we needed to make Mexican-style ham sandwiches: white sandwich bread, mayonnaise, queso panela, ham and pickled jalapeños. After assembling sandwiches in near silence for 40 minutes, we set off for the disaster site around the corner laden with four bags of sandwiches—the same ham-and-cheese sandwiches made daily by millions of Mexican mothers for their school-bound children. Comfort food. We walked out onto my street, crowded with people carrying shovels, pick axes, and buckets. I was humbled to see so many of my neighbours rushing to save lives.
It took us less than five minutes to reach Chimalpopoca street. We turned the corner and waded into the pandemonium. At the end of the block beyond the crowd of hundreds was a floodlit pile of rubble 10 metres high, rescuers shouting atop broken slabs of concrete. Ismael and I were invited past a police line of riot shields and dropped off our contributions at the collection tent. The noise and the chaos stung and, with no reason to linger, we headed back to my apartment.
I burst into tears the minute we stepped inside.
In the days following the quake, Mexico City became a kinder and gentler version of its normal self. Traffic was lighter and drivers mostly stopped honking their horns to express their frustration at others. Even the normal autumn smog had dissipated. We lined up at hardware stores to buy pick axes, gloves, helmets, safety vests, nylon rope, bolt cutters and crow bars. We lined up at pharmacies to buy medication, syringes, electrolyte solution, diapers, baby formula and bandages. When our bank accounts ran low, we turned to fundraising to get more money to buy more things—whatever we could—for the rescue and recovery effort.
We were told to stop donating food. So many of us wanted to feed the rescuers that food was now piling up and going uneaten.
Us Chilangos also saw our stress and anxiety metamorphose into physical symptoms—like sore muscles and gas. I thought I was the only one suffering from leg pains and uncontrollable farting, until I asked around and found that I was not alone. Although most of the gas leaks in buildings had been fixed, gas leaks of the human kind continued unabated.
We were shaky and skittish—and not only because of our collective mental state. The ground continued to move beneath us, sometimes strong enough to set off the earthquake alarms and sometimes not. By early October, we had been rattled by more than 6,500 aftershocks. Our nerves were shot.
"What doesn't kill you makes you stronger," some say.
Bullshit. What doesn't kill you gives you PTSD.
Genova Street in the Zona Rosa on September 20, 2017. The damaged high-rise building on the left has since been demolished.
Within a week, a new sort of normal had settled in.
The new normal meant walking past piles of broken glass and concrete in the streets. We had to walk in the streets because so many sidewalks had been cordoned off to protect pedestrians from falling debris. The new normal brought thousands of tents around the city that served as collection points for food, medicine and emergency rescue supplies. The new normal meant people living in tents on the street, along landscaped medians and in city parks. Shelters popped up haphazardly; my own neighbourhood’s emergency shelter was set up at the site that used to be home to Butterflies, a gay bar celebrated for its elaborate drag shows and that was also the first gay bar I ever visited in Mexico City.
Given the need for housing, I decided to offer my spare bedroom to someone who had been made homeless by the quake. Within 24 hours of posting an ad online, I had a roommate—my first in 15 years. Fanny used to live on the 16th floor of an apartment in Tlatelolco, a sprawling housing estate where entire towers pancaked in the 1985 quake. After the recent earthquake, her apartment tower was declared in imminent danger; she wasn't given much time to get out and had to leave behind most of her belongings. I was old enough to be her father, but we got along fine and I felt happy to be able to offer her shelter during such tumult.
This is the site of Bolivar 168, a four-story commercial building that collapsed around the corner from my apartment. I’d walked past this building hundreds of times, yet it was so unremarkable that I couldn't even remember what it looked like. At least 21 people—mostly immigrants—died here, employed in precarious circumstances. It took just three weeks to clear the rubble. Within two months, the site was being used as a parking lot, the victims already largely forgotten.
One month after the earthquake and the goodwill among citizens had largely disappeared. Mexico City returned to normal far more quickly than I was prepared for. By "normal" I mean drivers leaning on their horns while narrowly missing pedestrians, cyclists riding down the middle of crowded sidewalks, and everyone pushing and shoving in the Metro—which was no longer offering free rides. Cops went back to shaking down citizens and, once again, we reverted to our well-founded suspicion of strangers. It was all too much and worse than before, since the urban chaos was now framed by a dystopian panorama of mounds of rubble and makeshift shrines to the dead.
Implausibly, tourists continued to visit Mexico City. They strolled the streets of Roma, Condesa and the Zona Rosa taking selfies in front of condemned buildings to post on Instagram. Residents posted signs imploring visitors to not take photos; such written pleas were soundly ignored. Even I found myself soothing the nerves of my own visitors, who asked me whether it was okay to do the sorts of touristy things that wouldn’t have raised eyebrows before the quake. But after the quake, their actions seemed wrong. Everything just seemed wrong.
Two years after the quake, many in Mexico City have recovered and returned to their former selves and former lives. Some of us, however, are more depressed and anxious than we used to be, and we still jump at the sound of a car alarm. We are more likely to have emotional problems that interfere with our ability to enjoy life. We wonder when we will feel normal again.
Before the earthquake, I had been working on my drawing skills and had dreams of making comics. I drew this comic nine days after the earthquake. To date, it’s the last comic I ever made.