The Jim Bakker Show

South Korea postpones university exam after rare earthquake

By Christine Kim and Cynthia Kim

SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korea postponed its annual university entrance exam by a week on Wednesday after a rare earthquake rattled the country, shaking buildings and causing damage but no deaths.

Minister of Education Kim Sang-kon said the hugely competitive exam, scheduled for Thursday, would be postponed for the first time ever because of a natural disaster. It was the country’s second-biggest earthquake on record.

“A fair amount of damage was reported,” Kim told a media briefing.

“Due to the continued aftershocks, we are seeing many citizens, including students, unable to return home.”

The exam would now be held on Nov. 23 to ensure conditions were fair for everyone, he said.

The 5.4 magnitude quake struck about 9 km (5 miles) north of the southeastern port city of Pohang, the Korea Meteorological Administration said.

Shaking was felt across the country and there were numerous reports of minor damage. Operations at nuclear reactors were not affected, the state-run nuclear operator Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power Co said.

The university entrance exam is taken very seriously. Commercial airliners do not fly during listening portions of the exam, while financial markets open later in the day to ensure light traffic for students to get to their exam centers.

The country’s foreign exchange and stock markets will still open an hour late (0100 GMT) on Thursday, South Korean financial authorities said in text messages.

South Korea has relatively little seismic activity, compared with Japan to the east.

Its strongest quake on record was magnitude 5.8 in September last year.

The Meteorological Administration said nearly 20 aftershocks had shaken the region and more were expected in coming days.

(Reporting by Christine Kim and Cynthia Kim; Additional reporting by Jane Chung, Haejin Choi; Editing by Robert Birsel)

Collapsed state housing in Iranian quake shows corruption: Rouhani

BEIRUT (Reuters) – The ease with which some state-built homes collapsed in Sunday’s earthquake in western Iran showed corrupt practices when they were constructed, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on Wednesday in a sentiment shared by many ordinary Iranians.

Some of the houses which collapsed in an earthquake that killed at least 530 people and injured thousands of others were built under an affordable housing scheme initiated in 2011 by Rouhani’s predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

“That a house built by (ordinary) people in the Sarpol-e Zahab region has remained standing while in front of it a government-built building has collapsed is a sign of corruption,” Rouhani told a cabinet meeting, state media said.

“It’s clear there has been corruption in construction contracts,” he said.

Sarpol-e Zahab is the town hardest hit by Sunday’s 7.3 magnitude quake, the deadliest in Iran in more than a decade.

A picture widely circulated by ordinary Iranians on social media shows a building with relatively little damage in Sarpol-e Zahab next to a heavily damaged government-constructed building.

This has fueled speculation that shoddy construction in the building of government housing had led to a higher number of casualties from the earthquake.

Rouhani said on Tuesday that any shortcomings in government constructed buildings in the earthquake zone will be punished.

Mohammad Hossein Sadeghi, the prosecutor general in Kermanshah, the largest city in the earthquake zone, said on Wednesday that the quality of construction of new buildings that were heavily damaged would be investigated and charges may be brought against anyone deemed responsible.

“If there are any problems with the construction, the individuals who were negligent must answer for their deeds,” Sadeghi said, according to the Iranian Students’ News Agency (ISNA).

An arrest warrant has been issued for a contractor responsible for a recently built hospital which was heavily damaged in the town of Islamabad-e Gharb, parliamentarian Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh said on Tuesday, according to the Iranian Labour News Agency (ILNA).

Residents in the earthquake zone have also complained about the slow and inadequate government response as they struggle to find food, water and shelter.

(Reporting By Babak Dehghanpisheh; Editing by Richard Balmforth)

Iran ends quake rescue operations, hungry survivors battle cold

By Parisa Hafezi

ANKARA (Reuters) – Iranian officials said there was little chance of finding more survivors from the earthquake that shook parts of western Iran on Sunday, killing at least 450 people, and rescue operations had now been called off, state television said on Tuesday.

Survivors, many left homeless by the 7.3 magnitude earthquake that struck villages and towns in a mountainous area bordering Iraq, battled overnight temperatures just above freezing and faced another bleak day on Tuesday in need of food and water.

President Hassan Rouhani arrived in the morning in the stricken area in Kermanshah province and promised that the government would “use all its power to resolve the problems in the shortest time”.

At least 14 provinces in Iran were affected by the quake which destroyed two whole villages, damaged 30,000 houses and left thousands of people injured.

Thousands of people huddled in makeshift camps while many others chose to spend a second night in the open, despite low temperatures, because they feared more tremors after some 193 aftershocks, state television said.

A homeless young woman in Sarpol-e Zahab, one of the hardest-hit towns, told state TV that her family was exposed to the night cold because of lack of tents.

“We need help. We need everything. The authorities should speed up their help,” she said.

Television showed rescue workers combing through the rubble of dozens of villages immediately after the quake. But Iranian officials said chances of finding any more survivors were remote.

“The rescue operations in Kermanshah province have ended,” Pir-Hossein Kolivand, head of Iran’s Emergency Medical Services, said.

Iran’s top authority, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, offered his condolences on Monday and called on government agencies to do all they could to help.

Iranian army, the elite Revolutionary Guards and its affiliated Basij militia forces were dispatched to affected areas on Sunday night.

A woman reacts next to a dead body following an earthquake in Sarpol-e Zahab county in Kermanshah, Iran. Tasnim News Agency/Handout via REUTERS

BITTER COLD

Hospitals in nearby provinces took in many of the injured, state television said, airing footage of survivors waiting to be treated. Hundreds of critically injured were dispatched to hospitals in Tehran.

Iran’s Red Crescent said emergency shelter had been provided for thousands of homeless people, but a lack of water and electricity as well as blocked roads in some areas hindered aid supply efforts.

“People in some villages are still in dire need of food, water and shelter,” governor of Qasr-e Shirin Faramarz Akbari said.

The mayor of Ezgeleh, a city in Kermanshah, said 80 percent of their buildings had collapsed and they desperately needed tents with elderly people and babies as young as one-year-old sleeping in the cold for two straight nights.

In an interview with state television Nazar Barani asked people to send them fuel, milk, water and food as emergency services were too slow and providing limited provisions.

A local man told ISNA news agency that “people are hungry and thirsty. There is no electricity. Last night I cried when I saw children with no food or shelter.”

More than 30,000 houses in the area were damaged and at least two villages were completely destroyed, Iranian authorities said.

Houses in Iranian villages are often made of concrete blocks or mudbrick that can crumble and collapse in a strong quake. Some people are angry that among the collapsed buildings were houses that the government has built in recent years under its affordable housing program.

Photographs posted on Iranian news websites showed rescue workers digging people out of collapsed buildings, cars smashed beneath rubble and rescue dogs trying to find signs of life under the twisted remains of collapsed buildings.

“More people will die because of cold. My family lives in a village near Sarpol-e Zahab. I cannot even go there. I don’t know whether they are dead or alive,” Rojan Meshkat, 38, in the Kurdish city of Sanandaj told Reuters by telephone.

Iran is crisscrossed by major fault lines and has suffered several devastating earthquakes in recent years, including a 6.6 magnitude quake in 2003 that reduced the historic southeastern city of Bam to dust and killed some 31,000 people.

The quake, centered in Penjwin in Iraq’s Sulaimaniyah province in the Kurdistan region, killed at least six people in Iraq and injured more than 68. In northern Iraq’s Kurdish districts, seven were killed and 325 wounded.

A man gestures inside a damaged building following an earthquake in Sarpol-e Zahab county in Kermanshah, Iran. REUTERS/Tasnim News Agency

(Writing by Parisa Hafezi in Ankara, additional reporting by Bozorgmehr Sharafedin in London, Editing and Nick Macfie and Richard Balmforth)

South Korea spy agency sees signs of planned new missile test by North

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visits a cosmetics factory in this undated photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) in Pyongyang on October 28, 2017.

By Hyonhee Shin

SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korea may be planning a new missile test, South Korea’s spy agency told lawmakers on Thursday, after brisk activity was spotted at its research facilities, just days before U.S. President Donald Trump visits Seoul.

Reclusive North Korea has carried out a series of nuclear and missile tests in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions, but has not launched any missiles since firing one over Japan on Sept. 15, the longest such lull this year.

However a flurry of activity including the movement of vehicles has been detected at the North’s missile research facilities in Pyongyang, where the most recent missile test was conducted, pointing to another possible launch, South Korea’s Intelligence Service said in a briefing to lawmakers.

It did not say how the activity was detected.

North Korea has made no secret of its plans to perfect a nuclear-tipped missile capable of reaching the U.S. mainland. It regularly threatens to destroy the United States and its “puppet”, South Korea.

“There is a possibility of a new missile launch given the active movement of vehicles around the missile research institute in Pyongyang. The North will constantly push for further nuclear tests going forward, and the miniaturization and diversification of warheads,” the intelligence agency said at the briefing.

The North’s nuclear testing site in the northwestern town of Punggye-ri could have been damaged by its sixth and largest nuclear test on Sept. 3, according to Kim Byung-kee, Yi Wan-young and Lee Tae-gyu, members of South Korea’s parliamentary intelligence committee.

The explosion triggered an aftershock within eight minutes and three additional shocks.

Japanese broadcaster TV Asahi, citing unnamed sources, said on Tuesday a tunnel at the test site collapsed after that explosion, possibly killing more than 200 people. Reuters has not been able to verify the report which North Korea on Thursday denounced as false and defamatory.

Pyongyang will likely detonate more devices as it tries to master the miniaturization of nuclear warheads to put atop missiles, the lawmakers said.

The third tunnel at the Punggye-ri complex remained ready for another test “at any time”, while construction had resumed at a fourth tunnel, making it unable to be used “for a considerable amount of time”, they added.

Trump is to visit five Asian nations in coming days for talks in which North Korea will be a major focus. The visit includes the North’s lone major ally, China, and U.S. allies Japan and South Korea, which have watched with increasing worry as Trump and North Korea have exchanged bellicose rhetoric.

(Reporting by Hyonhee Shin in Seoul; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Lloyd’s of London estimates Maria claims of $900 mln, cuts Harvey, Irma estimates

Buildings damaged by Hurricane Maria are seen in Lares, Puerto Rico, October 6, 2017. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson

LONDON (Reuters) – Lloyd’s of London estimated net claims of $900 million for Hurricane Maria, which caused devastation in Puerto Rico last month, the specialist insurance market said on Monday.

Lloyd’s also revised down its net claims estimates for hurricanes Harvey and Irma, which hit the United States in recent weeks, to $3.9 billion from initial estimates of $4.5 billion.

Insurers and reinsurers are counting the costs of the three hurricanes, which together with earthquakes in Mexico and wildfires in California, are adding up to a heavy year for natural catastrophe losses.

Lloyd’s said it had already paid $900 million in claims for the three hurricanes.

“We are experiencing one of the most active hurricane seasons this century,” Jon Hancock, Lloyd’s performance management director said.

“While it is clear that these catastrophes will bear a heavy toll, the claims are spread across the entire Lloyd’s market, which has total net financial resources of 28 billion pounds ($36.92 billion).”

Hancock said that while Lloyd’s was cutting its earlier estimates for Harvey and Irma, “this is a developing situation and there continues to be a high degree of uncertainty around any claims estimate”.

(Reporting by Carolyn Cohn; editing by Maiya Keidan)

In Mexican slum, a decades-long wait for quake relief

By Carlos Jasso

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – I first visited Camp No. 3 a few days after the Sept. 19 earthquake.

After reporting from collapsed buildings around the city, this was a different type of shock. Row after row of tiny tin shacks crammed into a small lot hidden behind a high fence in the middle class neighborhood of Lindavista.

Here, hundreds of families who lost their homes in an earthquake 32 years ago are living in deplorable conditions, with children and grandchildren born during the interminable wait for promised government-subsidized homes.

The 1985 earthquake was a defining moment for the Mexican capital. The death toll is still disputed, but at least 5,000 were killed. Some say many more died.

Three decades on, hundreds of its victims are still living in hovels in encampments across the sprawling city of 20 million and now the latest quake has made thousands more people homeless.

Maria de Lourdes Rosales, 64, who lost her home in the 1985 earthquake, answers her phone in her house at the camp known as No.3 in Mexico City, Mexico, October 16, 2017. The camp was founded in 1985 after an earthquake, which killed around 5,000 people. REUTERS/Carlos Jasso

On first impression the camp is a little menacing, the smell of marijuana hangs in the air and residents warn of thieves and petty crime they blame on new arrivals – people who have moved in to occupy shacks left by families who have received new homes.

A strong sense of community prevails among the 1985 earthquake survivors, necessary perhaps for families who share outdoor toilets and use bared electric cables to heat water to bathe.

And as I have seen among many of Latin America’s poorest people, there is resourcefulness. Most families had some kind of work, many setting up small businesses like food stands selling tacos, or makeshift photocopy shops on the roadside.

One woman made her living charging for toilet paper and access to a bathroom.

According to the leaders of the Lindavista camp, its ramshackle shacks are home to around 750 people, divided into roughly 250 families.

There are almost 200 children who are the grandchildren of those originally resettled here, according to local leaders.

At least six such camps exist in the capital. Mexico City’s housing institute said that since 2016, it has delivered 173 homes to victims of the 1985 quake and expects to hand over 120 more before the end of next year.

A cross is displayed at the home of Martha Mejia at the camp known as No.3, in Mexico City, Mexico, October 17, 2017. The camp was founded in 1985 after an earthquake, which killed around 5,000 people. Mejia lost her home in the 1985 earthquake. REUTERS/Carlos Jasso

Click on http://reut.rs/2go1OS4 for related photo essay

(Reporting by Carlos Jasso; Additional reporting by Noe Torres; Writing by Frank Jack Daniel; Editing by Toni Reinhold)

After massive quakes, millions in Mexico turn to early warning app

By Sheky Espejo

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Since two massive earthquakes hit Mexico in September, claiming more than 460 lives, an early warning start-up called SkyAlert has doubled its users to 5.8 million, making it one of the country’s most downloaded apps.

SkyAlert has also found a market selling alarms to small businesses in the capital, said its co-founder and director Alvaro Velasco. And it is looking to expand to Latin America, mainly Colombia, Peru and Chile, which lack an official alerting system despite frequent quakes in those countries.

Velasco said that he and SkyAlert co-founder Alejandro Cantú are talking to investors from Mexico and elsewhere about raising 100 million pesos ($5.35 million) in capitalization in 2018.

He said the surge in users after the most recent deadly quake in Mexico City had heightened the interest of existing investors including U.S.-based American Messaging and attracted interest from two Mexico-based private equity funds.

American Messaging did not respond to requests to comment on any potential new investment.

Velasco said SkyAlert was in talks with those funds and existing investors to inject around 20 million pesos (1.05 million dollars) into SkyAlert.

Still, finding a sustainable business model for the quake monitoring app has been a challenge partly because recent regulation in Mexico City has limited SkyAlert’s ability to access funds through public financing.

MAKING A PROFIT NOT EASY

Shomit Ghose at Onset Ventures, a U.S. private equity company with experience in software start-ups, said quake apps have struggled to get adequate financing because of the lack of a clear path to profits.

“If the business model is B2B where the earthquake early-warning is sent to companies, or railways, or hospitals, or high-buildings then perhaps a strong B2B case can be made for start-up investment,” Ghose said.

SkyAlert’s predicament echoes that of companies seeking funding to develop earthquake alert apps in the United States. Seismic activity is hard to monetize without government support.

It competes with its former partner, Mexico’s official alerting system run by government-funded non profit CIRES, which was created after an earthquake in 1985 killed thousands in the country.

One of the world’s few widely deployed seismic alarms, CIRES runs a network of sirens positioned around Mexico City that warn of a coming quake. SkyAlert mainly warns people through a mobile app.

Both sell quake warning systems, but a 2016 regulatory reform requires public buildings in Mexico City to purchase alarm systems from CIRES, limiting SkyAlert’s public financing.

SkyAlert initially replicated CIRES’ alerts, but in 2015 it decided to deploy its own detection sensors to increase coverage with greater accuracy, Velasco said.

“After a few false alerts from CIRES that affected SkyAlert’s credibility, we decided to invest in our own technology,” he said.

SkyAlert also is exploring ways to monetize its free app.

Currently, it sells a “premium” version for $4 a year that allows users to personalize alerts. However, Mexico has an average per capita income of $8,200, and the company said only around 4 percent of users pay for it.

Velasco said SkyAlert’s revenue is split fairly evenly between those fees and income from selling to businesses.

The newest version of the app allows for paid advertising, but ads would not be visible during a seismic alert.

SkyAlert, founded in 2011, has few peers, but one similar service in Japan is called YureKuru Call, which relies on government seismic data. YureKuru has received some government funding on an ad-hoc basis, but like SkyAlert is mostly funded by fees, said Rina Suzuki, an official at RC Solution Co., the Tokyo-based firm that developed YureKuru.

Detection technologies are evolving and they are all perfectible, Jennifer Strauss, external relations officer at the Berkeley Seismology Lab told Reuters.

“In the end, what matters is how effective they are at alerting people to save lives,” said Strauss.

(Additional reporting by Christine Murray in Mexico City and Minami Funakoshi in Tokyo; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel and Diane Craft)

California prepares for the ‘big one’ with earthquake drill

By Steve Gorman

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Millions of Californians were due on Thursday to simultaneously drop to the floor, clamber under tables and cover their heads for a minute or two of imagined seismic turmoil during the latest annual “Great ShakeOut” earthquake drill.

The event, first held nine years ago in the Los Angeles area, was organized by scientists and emergency officials as part of a campaign to prepare the region’s inhabitants for a catastrophic quake that experts say is inevitable and long overdue.

The exercise has since expanded to encompass all of California and most other states, as well as some other countries, including Canada and Japan. In many places, entire school districts, colleges, workplaces and municipalities have registered to take part.

In keeping with the drill’s quake-survival message, participants are urged to “drop, cover and hold” – meaning get down on hands and knees, cover their heads and necks under a sturdy piece of furniture and hang on until the hypothetical shaking stops.

To help participants get into the mood, organizers have even prepared audio recordings of quake-rumbling sounds that can be downloaded, with or without narration, and played during the drill.

Such rehearsals are especially important in regions such as Southern California, where “it’s not a matter of if but when that catastrophic earthquake will strike,” said Ken Kondo, spokesman for Los Angeles County’s emergency management office.

One of the larger gatherings planned is to be held at the Natural History Museum in Exposition Park near downtown Los Angeles.

Following the drill, the city fire department, American Red Cross, police and other agencies will stage a full-scale earthquake-response exercise, setting up a medical triage area, emergency shelters and mass-feeding operation, Kondo said.

That drill is based on the premise of a magnitude 7.8 quake striking the southern end of the San Andreas Fault, a subterranean chasm between two massive plates of the Earth’s crust that extends hundreds of miles across California.

The scenario was devised by geophysicists and engineers who envisioned a calamity that would leave 1,800 people dead, 50,000 injured and 250,000 homeless while severing highways, power lines, pipelines, railroads, communications networks and aqueducts, and toppling some 1,500 buildings.

As of late Wednesday, nearly 53 million participants were registered for ShakeOut drills worldwide, including more than 10.2 million in California, organizers said.

The exercise is set to begin at 10:19 a.m. local time, corresponding with the date of the event.

A rupture of the San Andreas Fault in northern California caused the massive quake that laid waste to San Francisco in 1906. The last “big one” to strike south of the San Gabriel Mountains near Los Angeles was 300 years ago. The average interval between such quakes in that region is just 150 years, experts say.

(Reporting by Steve Gorman; Editing by Leslie Adler)

Magnitude 5.4 quake rumbles southern Mexico, no reports of damage

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – A 5.4 magnitude quake struck southern Mexico on Friday, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, but there were no immediate reports of damage.

It was not immediately clear if the tremor was an aftershock from a powerful series of quakes last month that destroyed buildings in Mexico City and killed nearly 500 people.

The epicenter of Friday’s tremor was just off the coast of Oaxaca state, in Mexico’s southwest, and it struck at a depth of 59.5 kilometers (37 miles), according to the USGS.

An 8.1 magnitude earthquake struck Oaxaca on Sept. 7 near the town of Juchitan, flattening thousands of buildings in the humid market town.

Fausto Lugo, Mexico City’s emergency services chief, said on local television that Friday’s earthquake was felt lightly in the capital, but there were no reports of damages.

(Reporting by Gabriel Stargardter; Editing by Andrew Hay)

Weak columns, extra floors led to Mexico school collapse, experts say

People put floral wreaths for the students of the Enrique Rebsamen school after an earthquake in Mexico city, Mexico September 22, 2017. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido

By Michael O’Boyle and Daina Beth Solomon

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – A Mexico City school that collapsed in a powerful earthquake last week killing 19 children buckled under the heavy weight of floors added over the years with scant steel support, according to experts and witnesses.

The tragedy at the privately owned Enrique Rebsamen school in southern Mexico City, in which seven adults also died, has become a symbol of the devastation inflicted by the country’s 7.1 magnitude quake, the worst in a generation. At least 355 people died in the capital and surrounding states.

“The building was badly designed, poorly calculated and poorly constructed,” said Alfredo Perez, a 52-year old civil engineer who dashed to the school shortly after the Sept. 19 quake to help rescue efforts. “The reinforced concrete doesn’t comply with specifications in construction regulations.”

Alongside rescue workers, Perez said, he pulled bodies from the rubble. Then he sat in one of the undamaged classrooms and drew plans detailing potential design failures in the collapsed building.

Reuters showed those plans to six structural engineers along with Reuters’ photos of the ruined structure. They independently concluded that the structure’s columns lacked sufficient steel rebar to support all four floors and prevent them from snapping in such a powerful earthquake.

While the quantity of steel required under Mexico’s stringent post-1985 building code varies depending on the size of structure, all six engineers said the building’s columns were built with too little steel to withstand strong quakes.

Perez and another engineer specified that columns appeared to have less than half the required amount of steel reinforcement. They base their view on the number of vertical and horizontal steel rebar rods in the columns, which are visible in Reuters photos along with the measurements in Perez’s plans.

“It comes down to the lack of steel,” said Troy Morgan, a New York-based senior managing engineer at Exponent, an engineering consulting firm.

Since a 1985 quake toppled hundreds of buildings in Mexico City, planning officials developed a strict building code at the forefront of international standards for quake-proofing that raised the proportion of required steel reinforcement.

Reuters was unable to locate or contact the school’s owner and principal, Monica Garcia. Teachers, current and former students and their families all said she had been at the premises during the quake and survived.

Reuters was unable to identify the builder. A spokesman for the Tlalpan district where the school was located said property owners are not required to notify authorities of the builders or architects they used for modifications. The spokesman said the district had no record of the builder that worked on the new floors at the school. People living by the school said they did not know who had done the work.

The Mexico City urban development department did not respond to requests for comment on whether the inspectors who certified the school had proper licenses or any history of complaints.

Although the school was founded in 1983, before the new code took effect, the administrative building that buckled was expanded from two to four floors over the last decade or so, neighbors and former students said.

Photos published by Google Maps show the building had four floors as of 2009 with an expansion of the top floor by 2014 and a further expansion in 2016.

“It definitely did not comply with the post-1985 code,” said Eduardo Miranda, a civil and environmental engineering professor at Stanford who collected statistics on buildings that collapsed in Mexico’s 1985 earthquake, citing the code, photos and plans.

Construction permits released by local authorities dated in 1983 and 1984 authorized a four story structure at the school site. The top two floors were added much later, meaning the existing structure should have been brought up to modern standards, according to Mexico City’s construction code.

The engineers who studied the photos and plans said the existing building had not been visibly reinforced.

Mexican prosecutors said they had opened a probe into potential criminal responsibility of the owner and private inspectors for the collapse. Prosecutors also said they had opened an investigation in February into whether the school had the proper zoning permits to operate.

Luis Felipe Puente, coordinator of Mexico’s Civil Protection department, told Reuters that local officials, the construction company and the owner of the property could all be held accountable if any violations were discovered.

One inspector, Juan Apolinar Torales Iniesta, gave the buildings its most recent safety certificate in June according to documents filed with the local government, which released them publicly.

Torales did not respond to requests for comment sent to telephone numbers and emails listed in a government database. At Torales’ government-registered address, a man refused to identify himself and said the registered architectural engineer did not live there.

Claudia Sheinbaum, Tlalpan district mayor, filed a criminal complaint on Thursday accusing two prior attorneys for the district Alejandro Zepeda and Miguel Angel Guerrero of maliciously failing to enforce the law after discovering unpermitted construction between 2010 and 2014 on the upper floors.

“What we’ve found is truly outrageous,” she said, referring to a document dated Nov. 8, 2013 by the Tlalpan public works department that described demolition work on the upper floors causing structural damage to the building. Despite that document, which she made public and was reviewed by Reuters, the school was allowed to keep operating with a small fine, Sheinbaum said

Guerrero did not immediately respond to requests for comment sent to his email address. Zepeda did not respond to a message sent to his Facebook account.

‘LACK OF STEEL’

All six engineers said the addition of two floors dangerously loaded down the building, given its lack of steel support.

“If it was kept at two levels, it would have not collapsed…it would not have caused so many deaths,” said Casey Hemmatyar, managing director at Pacific Structural and Forensic Engineers Group, a consultancy firm in Los Angeles.

Based on the position of the ruins, the school lurched as much as 18 feet (5.5 m) towards the street before collapsing, a sign of weak columns, said Geoffrey Hichborn, chief engineer at Building Forensics International, a concrete consulting firm in Anaheim, California.

Mexico City’s government has not completed its own analysis, and Sheinbaum said the rubble would be left in place for engineers to investigate.

Documents published by Sheinbaum on Tlalpan district’s website, including building inspection reports and closure orders from the district’s attorneys, show that officials ordered fourth-floor construction to be halted at several points between 2010 and 2014 because it lacked proper permits.

Sheinbaum’s complaint filed Thursday refers to these documents and others filed with the district to say the irregularities were never resolved.

“No evidence or documents exist that allow the conclusion that these irregularities were corrected,” the complaint said. Reuters was unable to independently confirm whether or not corrective measures were taken.

(Additional reporting by Stefanie Eschenbacher, Anthony Esposito and Daniel Trotta; Editing by Daniel Flynn and Frank Jack Daniel)

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