Magnitude 7.7: a strong earthquake struck western Mexico on Monday, September 19, and was felt as far as central Mexico City, informed the national seismological institute, which had first mentioned a magnitude of 6, 8 then 7.4. President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, quoting a navy official, reported a death in the state of Colima (west) following the fall of a fence in a shopping center.
“There are no consequences in Mexico so far” most “we continue to collect information”, said, as a first assessment, the mayor of the capital, Claudia Sheinbaum. In Mexico City, residents took to the streets again when the alarm sounded, a few minutes after 1 p.m., barely half an hour after an earthquake drill. “We didn’t think that was true! But if. It is impressive that today, once again, the earth is shaking so strongly”Karina Suarez, 37, told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The epicenter was located several hundred kilometers from Mexico City, in the state of Michoacan (west), where no major damage has been recorded at this stage either, according to an AFP correspondent. “We are assessing the damage”reported the local civil protection.
Ten thousand deaths in 1985
September 19 is recurrent in the seismic history of the country: on this same date, in 1985 and in 2017, very large earthquakes occurred in Mexico. An anti-seismic exercise is also organized each year in Mexico City by the authorities on the occasion of this double anniversary. On this occasion, residents are invited to evacuate their homes and places of work at the first alarm, to join “meeting points” reported in each district.
On September 19, 2017, a magnitude 7.1 earthquake killed 369 people. On September 19, 1985, an earthquake of magnitude 8.1 devastated the center of Mexico City, killing more than 10,000 people, most of them in the capital. Mexico sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire, where the meeting of tectonic plates causes high seismic activity.
At the time of the earthquake on Monday, Mme Sheinbaum was still at the police operations center from where she had overseen the annual drill less than an hour earlier. “There is nothing that tells us scientifically that September 19 is a special day for an earthquake to occur”thought it necessary to specify the mayor of Mexico, a physicist by training.