MEXICO CITY _ The death toll in Mexico's devastating earthquake rose Thursday to 252, as a grieving nation's attention was riveted on dramatic efforts at a collapsed school in the capital where rescuers were in communication with a trapped girl.
Battling grinding fatigue and mountains of rubble, rescuers in three Mexican states raced against time in the search for survivors, keenly aware of ever-dwindling odds of finding people alive beneath the debris.
The dead after Tuesday's devastating magnitude 7.1 temblor included dozens of schoolchildren, and the overall confirmed fatality count was expected to climb as more bodies were recovered.
Approaching the 48-hour mark since the quake, rescuers at sites across the sprawling metropolis of Mexico City used search dogs and calls to the cellphones of those trapped inside to try to pinpoint the location of those who had survived two full nights under the remains of damaged buildings.
Rescuers believed they were getting closer to pinpointing the location of a 12-year-old girl trapped beneath the debris of a collapsed elementary school in the capital that has come to be seen as a crucible of the country's suffering. Wrenching scenes have unfolded night and day outside the Enrique Rebsamen school since its collapse, with anguished parents awaiting word of any discovery.
Early Thursday, the Mexican navy said in a statement that the body of a 58-year-old woman had been recovered from the school's ruins, and appealed for information about her identity.
An elite team of disaster experts, including an urban search-and-rescue team from the Los Angeles County Fire Department, landed Thursday morning in Mexico City to aid in relief efforts.
The U.S. Agency for International Development, known as USAID, reported the arrival of its Disaster Assistance Response Team, along with more than 60 firefighters and five highly trained dogs.
The USAID team, requested by the Mexican government, will conduct damage assessments, search for victims and coordinate with local authorities and aid groups to bring assistance to those most affected.
As dawn broke, rescue efforts pushed ahead in neighborhoods rich and poor. Hours earlier, in the affluent district of La Condesa, a woman's faint voice could hardly be heard under a pile of rubble that had been her second-story apartment. Rescuers believed there could be up to four people under the collapsed ruins.
Standing atop the building's remains on Wednesday night, firefighters, soldiers and volunteers used torches to singe metal rebar. They wielded wire cutters and peeled back entire floors in slices, digging past people's belongings: books, blankets, clothes, an ironing board. Couches and pillows went flying.
The rescuers demanded silence. One of them stuck his head down into the void, calling for anyone there to answer if they could. But it was still too loud. Generators and vehicles were turned off. Small chatter subsided.
"We need absolute silence," the worker said. "Please."
From a few dozen yards away, the voice sounded like a whisper. The rescuers waited. The trapped woman called to them again.
People stood still, captivated. Some of them wept. A woman broke the silence, yelling over a megaphone: "She is Lorna. She's on the second floor."
The woman said Lorna's family was trying to call her. Seconds later, a phone chimed from inside the pile.
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After Lorna spoke, the workers quickened their pace, passing buckets of concrete down lines of volunteers to a truck for disposal. A storm had come into the city around 7:30 p.m., pummeling the site with rain for several minutes. Thunder crackled and lightning flashed.
An ambulance was ready nearby. A man stood close holding an orange stretcher. But there were hours of work left. Lorna was rescued overnight and transported to a hospital.
In parts of the city, life appeared to be returning to normal Thursday. People stood in front of their homes, sweeping away leaves that had fallen in the overnight rainstorm. Mexico City's famous tamale vendors were back on the streets, hawking their wares from the backs of bicycles.
But neighborhoods more affected by the quake looked like war zones. Large army trucks lined a popular thoroughfare in Condesa. Soldiers guarded a park where rescue efforts were being coordinated. Many rescuers had worked through the night. The lucky ones had slept a little in soggy tents assembled in the park.
