"We are facing a new national emergency," Peña Nieto told citizens earlier on his first address following the earthquake.
In a scene repeated in streets across the city center, dozens of people scrabbled with bare hands to remove rubble from atop a collapsed building as they waited for specialized machinery to arrive. Local media reported around 30 collapsed buildings in Mexico City with at least four confirmed deaths in the capital, as the overall toll from surrounding areas rose past 200. This is Mexico’s worst earthquake to date.