W<\/span>hen\u00a0Mexico\u2019s worst earthquake for a century struck late on Thursday night<\/a>, Juan Carlos Sanchez and his wife had time only to bundle their children out of their one room shack before the walls collapsed around them.<\/p>\n The following day, they cannot pause even to pick their broken belongings from the rubble. Their seaside home trembles beneath their feet every half hour with aftershock tremors, and with the threat of a second equally large earthquake looming, they must retreat inland, alongside four hundred thousand other coastal residents in Chiapas state.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIt was worse than a bomb,\u201d he told the Telegraph, standing beside the wrecked wall he had built only six months before. \u201cWe are poor, and everything we have has been crushed. We can only thank God that our children are safe, but now we have nowhere to go\u201d.<\/p>\n M<\/span>r Sanchez and his family are residents of Cabeza de Toro, a beach settlement less than a thousand kilometres from the 8.1-magnitude earthquake\u2019s epicentre.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n A<\/span>s the sun rose over the Pacific Ocean on Friday morning, its residents were met with scenes of destruction on its neglected streets. Quickly informed that their town was no longer a safe place to be, by both government announcement and the aftershocks which shake the ground every half hour, the town\u2019s fifty thousand residents began to move.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n M<\/span>oving twenty miles inland to the relative safety of Tonala, the coast\u2019s residents used any means possible to distance themselves from the sea – stuffed unceremoniously into military wagons by Mexican soldiers deployed to their aid, four-person families balancing precariously on a speeding motorbike \u2013 the family\u2019s only vehicle \u2013 or sharing standing space alongside docile cattle in farm wagons.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n O<\/span>nce safety is reached inland, the earthquake\u2019s refugees have nowhere to go. Carrying only what they could salvage, they spend these humid late-summer nights sleeping in their adopted town\u2019s central square. Those who got here early reserved the bandstand and jealously guard it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIt was terrifying, I thought it was the end of the world\u201d, said Marta Sanchez, who fled with her four sons before the sun had come up over her ruined house. \u201cWe stood outside embracing one another and praying for it to stop shaking.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are regular earthquakes here in this part of Mexico, but I have never felt anything like that before\u201d, she said. \u201cWe will not go back until we are certain that the danger has passed. I won\u2019t risk my family\u2019s life over a destroyed house\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n 01:11<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n C<\/span>hiapas is Mexico\u2019s most impoverished state. Bordering Guatemala, the region is heavily populated by indigenous tribes who complain that Mexico\u2019s federal government cares little about their situation.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s no one\u2019s fault, but there is no infrastructure here to deal with this sort of natural disaster\u201d, said Jose Guadeloupe, a civil protection officer charged with overseeing the removal of the significant landslides caused by the tremor from the federal motorway.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n T<\/span>he earthquake\u2019s most recent death toll counts at least 51 dead and thousands more injured.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n T<\/span>he United States has offered aid to Mexican response teams, an offer many say is thanks to America\u2019s southern neighbour helping unasked with the recent Houston floods recovery. \u201cThe hospitals are under-staffed as it is\u201d, said Mr Guadeloupe, \u201cbut if there\u2019s one things Mexicans know how to do, it\u2019s to make room\u201d.<\/p>\n Yet as the exodus away from Mexico\u2019s Pacific coast continues, not every resident of Cabeza de Toro is convinced about abandoning their homes. \u201cI\u2019m staying, I\u2019m 68-years-old and don\u2019t want to sleep rough in a town I don\u2019t know\u201d, said Maria Chavez, looking at the ruins of her beach-side palm frond restaurant.<\/p>\n \u201cI was scared at first, but I began to look at it like my husband\u201d, she says with typical Mexican stoicism, \u201cif it\u2019s your time, what\u2019s the point of fighting it?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Telegraph News When\u00a0Mexico\u2019s worst earthquake for a century struck late on Thursday night, Juan Carlos Sanchez and his wife had time only to bundle their children out of their one room shack before the walls collapsed around them. The following day, they cannot pause even to pick their broken belongings from the rubble. Their seaside home trembles beneath their feet… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1017"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1017\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1018,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1017\/revisions\/1018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Juan](\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/content\/dam\/news\/2017\/09\/09\/TELEMMGLPICT000139809520_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqpVlberWd9EgFPZtcLiMQfyf2A9a6I9YchsjMeADBa08.jpeg?imwidth=480\")
<\/div>![\"\u00a0Cabeza](\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/content\/dam\/news\/2017\/09\/09\/TELEMMGLPICT000139809567_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqpVlberWd9EgFPZtcLiMQfyf2A9a6I9YchsjMeADBa08.jpeg?imwidth=480\")
<\/div>![\"Damage](\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/content\/dam\/news\/2017\/09\/09\/TELEMMGLPICT000139818833_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqpVlberWd9EgFPZtcLiMQfyf2A9a6I9YchsjMeADBa08.jpeg?imwidth=480\")
<\/div>Mexico struck by strongest earthquake in a century<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
![\"Mourners](\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/content\/dam\/news\/2017\/09\/09\/TELEMMGLPICT000139818846_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqZjHC1CawyhCYfmdoGgKrwCVNHl9S--FzbjYEKI6ecJw.jpeg?imwidth=480\")
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