'You feel that you're powerless': Winnipeg's Mexican community reeling after earthquake

The Mexican community in Winnipeg is worried for family and friends back homeaftera devastating earthquake that rocked Mexico's capital Tuesday, killing more than200 people, including children.

"It's very hard," saidAlineTezcucano, a board member of the Mex Y Can Association who has friends and family in Mexico.

"It's been very sad and also you feel that you're powerless," she said. "You want to help and you're far away and you're trying to do your best. You're trying to communicate ways in which people can find support or emergency or whichever things they need."

• Magnitude 7.1 earthquake hits Mexico
• Quake rescuers search school rubble as death toll hits 225

Tezcucano, who was born in Mexico City,said news of the earthquake came just as Mexicans were marking the anniversary of an earthquake that killed thousands in 1985. Shewas just a child when it happened and remembers it well.

"You start feeling the things moving and then just the sound of the windows and just that fear," she recalled.

"All those memories came back."

At least 225 dead

Rescue workers were scrabbling through rubble Wednesday in a floodlit searchfor dozens of children feared buried beneath a Mexico City school, one of hundreds of buildings destroyed by the country's most lethal earthquake in a generation.

The magnitude 7.1 quake hit Tuesday and killed at least 225 people, nearly half of them in the capital, 32 years to the day after the devastating 1985 quake.

Among the twisted concrete and steel ruins of the Enrique Rebsamen school, soldiers and firefighters found at least 22 dead children and two adults, while another 30 children and 12 adults are missing, President Enrique Pena Nieto said.

Mexico is also still recovering from a powerful tremor that killed nearly 100 people in the south of the country less than two weeks ago.

Tezcucano said her family is doing OK after Tuesday's quake, but she worries about others who may not be able to find safety.

Volunteers in Winnipeg are raising money to help fund rescue efforts that are underway.