The earthquake was felt even in the center of Mexico City. A person has died, said President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
Le Monde with AFP
Magnitude 7.4: a strong earthquake struck western Mexico on Monday, September 19, and was felt even in the center of Mexico City, informed the National Sismological Institute. President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, citing a navy official, reported a dead in the state of Colima (west) following the fall of a closure in a shopping center.
“There are no consequences in Mexico so far” but “we continue to collect information,” said the mayor of the capital as a first assessment, Claudia Sheinbaum. In Mexico City, the inhabitants went back to the streets when the alert resounded, a few minutes after 1 p.m., barely half an hour after an anti-sound exercise. “We did not think it was true! But if it is impressive that today, once again, the land is also trembling as strongly,” Karina Suarez, the agency France-Press (AFP), Karina Suarez, 37 years old.
Ten thousand dead in 1985
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, according to a correspondent AFP. “We carry out an evaluation of the damage,” said local civil protection.
September 19 are recurrent in the country’s seismic history: on the same date, in 1985 and 2017, very important earthquakes occurred in Mexico. An antisism exercise is also organized each year in Mexico City by the authorities on the occasion of this double anniversary. On this occasion, the inhabitants are invited to evacuate their home and their workplace from the first alarm, to join “meeting points” reported in each district.
On September 19, 2017, an earthquake of magnitude 7.1 had caused the death of 369 people. On September 19, 1985, an earthquake of magnitude 8.1 ravaged the center of Mexico City leading to the death of more than 10,000 people, most of them in the capital. Mexico is on the Pacific Fire belt, where the meeting of tectonic plates causes a high seismic activity.