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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | February 2005 
Mexico's 'Moles' Use Expertise To Help Indonesia
 Hugh Dellios - Chicago Tribune
 Mexico City — After seeing news of the earthquake and tsunami that devastated coastlines in South Asia, Antonio Alvarez and the rest of his ragtag team of volunteers hustled to offer the service they have been perfecting since Mexico City's own gigantic tremor in 1985 - digging for bodies, hopefully live ones.
Known here as los topos, or the moles, eight of a 40-member team took their 20 years of experience and flew halfway around the world to help the Indonesian army and Asian rescue teams search for survivors of the catastrophe, whose death toll is now estimated at more than 145,000.
It turned out to be their most difficult task ever. Only after arriving did they realize the chance of finding survivors was nearly nil.
And while Alvarez's group secured some funding for plane tickets, another group of topos had to virtually beg and hitchhike its way to the disaster zone, camping there in borrowed tents.
The effort showed the extent of international sympathy and solidarity toward the victims of the tsunami.
The topos ultimately deemed their trip a success, for the help they could give a few victims' families and for the lessons learned about how Mexico might prepare for a tsunami on its Pacific coast.
Working alongside body-recovery teams from Indonesia, Malaysia and China, the topos groups were the only teams from the Western hemisphere doing the grisly job.
"When you saw the magnitude of this disaster, no one could remain indifferent," said Alvarez, 37, a lawyer and father of one whose small stature makes him especially useful for going underneath piles of rubble. "This isn't desk work of course, but because of our different makeups, we all have something to offer."
Upon returning from Indonesia, Alvarez found that he had been fired by a boss in a notary firm who apparently wasn't as sympathetic to the tsunami victims' plight and disapproved of his being gone two weeks.
Los topos, officially named the Tlaltelolco Moles Rescue Brigade, was founded in 1985 after the earthquake that killed as many as 10,000 people in Mexico City.
It originally was composed of ordinary citizens who hustled to begin informal rescue efforts and was credited with saving at least 120 lives.
Since then, at least three groups of topos volunteers have emerged. They include teachers, industrial engineers and office workers, some of whom have trained as firefighters and in handling hazardous materials.
At least one of the groups has rushed to the sites of landslides in South America and earthquakes in El Salvador and Taiwan. One group traveled to Bam, Iran, to help out after the December 2003 earthquake that killed more than 30,000 people.
"This is our way of making up for what we experienced in '85, when other people helped us, and that is satisfying," said Jose Luis Bravo, 49, a topos founder who was getting ready for his job as a mini-bus driver in 1985 when the earthquake suddenly turned him into a rescue worker.
The day of the tsunami, Alvarez's group went straight to the Indonesian Embassy to offer help.
Its members received the backing of Mexico City's civil protection agency, which donated $22,000 for eight plane tickets, while the Mexican Foreign Ministry renewed two group members' soon-to-expire passports on a stopover in Singapore.
Once in Indonesia, they bummed a ride with the Australian Air Force to reach Banda Aceh, the most devastated city at the tip of Sumatra island.
There they found a chaotic atmosphere. But they set to work in the center of town, searching inside surviving buildings where Indonesian soldiers and local body-recovery volunteers wouldn't go because of the fear of aftershocks.
In nine days, the topos recovered about 150 bodies, including 60 in one day.
They say the work was more difficult than anything they had done before, especially without the energy and drive that normally fuel their race to find survivors.
What struck them most was the silence in the abandoned area, and how many bodies of children and pregnant women they found.
"It was rare that anyone came up to us and asked for help," said Rafael Lopez, 40, the team leader, who could recall only one young woman whom he thought was pointing out the whereabouts of her missing father.
"We left (Mexico) thinking that people would be trapped beneath the rubble, but upon arriving, we saw the reality," said Lopez, one of the first topos, who now works for the city's civil protection agency. "They're difficult, these missions where you don't find anyone alive. But sitting here at home, you can't just say, `It's not worth going.'"
Only on the sixth day did the group members take a breather and join their Malaysian colleagues in a truck tour of the coastline, where they saw miles of barren landscape where houses had been.
"That was kind of demoralizing," Lopez said.
At day's end, back at their camp at the military airport, the group would talk out what members had seen, trying to avoid depression. During their last couple of days on the island they helped restore a local hospital, so they could leave with some positive memories.
Among the lessons brought back was an observation that the second floors of many surviving houses were almost untouched by the tsunami. They concluded that, had victims known to run upstairs rather than out in the street, more lives could have been saved.
"We have big coasts where this can happen," Lopez said. |
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