This is how the City of Mexico receives the Millennium!
Taken and translated from the newspaper "Reforma" Jan. 6, 2000. Some
details have been added in order to give more information.
MEXICO CITY, A city of more
than 22 million people. (This is a conservative figure). In Mexico City, every
year, 220,000 children are born. Every
year, 46,000 people die. There is,
therefore, a net increase in population of 174,000 people every year.
Every day, an estimated 1,100 people emigrate from other parts of the
country, creating a potential yearly increase of over 400,000 people.
It is estimated that by the year 2020, the city will be home for more than
25,000,000 people. Currently the
city sprawls over 1200 square miles. It
is composed of 16 delegations and 28 municipalities.
If the population of the city would form a line chest to chest, the line would
extend for over 3700 miles, from California to Cancun.
The Metro, Mexico City's subway and elevated train system, has 11 different
lines and 166 stations. Every day the Metro moves 4.5 million people.
On average every resident of Mexico City consumes 79 gallons of water and
produces over 2 pounds of garbage every day.
The underground deep-drainage system that removes waste water from the
metropolitan area extends over 93 miles and is at places up to 780 feet below
the surface, depositing residential, commercial and industrial waste in the
neighboring state of Hidalgo.
In the space of 24 hours,
20.5 million trips are made in public
transportation. In Mexico City,
8,500 people die each year from heart related diseases. To feed the
Federal District (the political capital of the nation, but less than half of the
total metropolitan area) there are 318 public markets, 400 supermarkets and
18,000 miscellaneous stores. In the city's main public storage area, a
huge sprawl of wholesale good, 27,000 tons of foodstuffs are in storage in a
given day, and every day 800 tons spoil or are otherwise lost and thrown away.
In just the Federal District,
there are over 10,500 miles of roads. In
this same area there are 1,300 different neighborhoods, a figure that more than
doubles when taking into consideration the total metropolitan area.
3.6 million people leave their homes every day to work in the 316,000
businesses in the metro area.
The average air quality for
Mexico City is 159.8 points of ozone, an atmosphere that is considered
unsatisfactory by world health standards. There
are 19 different monitoring stations that report daily on air quality.
Upon many occasions there is more than a ton of rat dirt floating in the
air over the entire city. Because
of the extreme contamination the U.S. government does not permit its government
officials to reside in Mexico City more than two years.
Over 5 million gallons of
gasoline are consumed every day in the city. There are 13,000 homeless
"street" children and adolescents in the city. One out of every 20
children experiences a certain degree of malnutrition. Approximately 100,000,000
tortillas are eaten every day in Mexico City.
There are about 2 million apartment buildings in Mexico City.
In Mexico City alone, over 2 million people live with some degree of
neurological disorder.
Mexico City as a whole consumes almost 17,000 gallons of water every second, and
is sinking 6 inches every year since this city was built upon a lake that was
filled in.
PLEASE PRAY FOR MEXICO, ITS
PEOPLE AND OUR MISSIONARIES!