Rebuilding Juchitan, Mexico

"We have to work so that we're not overcome with sadness."
"Were not going to wait for the government to do what it has to do."
Maria de Lourdes Quintana Lopez, Juchitan, Mexico

Relatives and colleagues of 38-year-old local earthquake victim, policeman Juan Jimenez Regalado, weep on his coffin during his funeral in Juchitan, Oaxaca state, Mexico, Sunday Sept. 10, 2017 Felix Marquez/AP

While government cargo planes fly supplies and troops into what is left of Juchitan, where 37 people lost their lives in the powerful earthquake's paroxysm of earth-moving violence, people continue to sleep in the outdoors, anticipating more collapsed buildings while strong aftershocks are ongoing in the wake of the 8.1 Richter-scale main tremblor on Thursday. One of the aftershocks had a magnitude of 5.2 on Sunday, sufficiently alarming to convince rescue workers to take a break for safety.

According to local officials, almost 800 aftershocks of various strengths have followed Thursday's surprise earthquake, with the U.S. Geological Survey counting close to 60 of those aftershocks having a magnitude of 4.5 or more. Soldiers and federal police made their way carrying shovels and  sledgehammers across neighbourhoods in hard-hit Juchitan to demolish damaged buildings, while dump trucks haul off tons of rubble.

But as Ms. Lopez said in miserable frustration she had no patience to wait for government to assist, herself looking after the demolition work involved in her family candy business' warehouse.

The 8.1 magnitude earthquake caused so many deaths the resulting funeral processions are causing traffic pile-ups, as they converge on the city's cemeteries where scenes of mourning and desperation are repeated endlessly. Jichitan saw a third of its houses collapse and those that haven't are now uninhabitable. The general hospital on the outskirts of Juchitan removed to a temporary site, a school gymnasium, when the earthquake left the hospital building uninhabitable.

Chaos resulted when the earthquake struck and the staff had to move patients outdoors from the single-storey hospital, transferring most of the patients requiring special care on to other facilities. Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto has responded to the calamity by assuring those so horribly affected that the government will commit to aiding in the rebuilding of their city.

Rescuers pulled bodies from the rubble and grieving families carried coffins through the streets Saturday after Mexico's biggest earthquake in a century     Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP/Getty Images