In Mexico, September 19 is decidedly cursed: a strong earthquake with a magnitude of 7.7 shook the west of the country and the capital Mexico City on Monday, the anniversary of the deadly earthquakes of 1985 and 2017.
One person died in the west of the country, said President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
One injured was reported in the state of Michoacan (west), where the epicenter was located near the Pacific.
No major damage was recorded in Mexico City (nine million intramural inhabitants, 25 million with its metropolis).
In the capital, the tremor was strongly felt for several seconds, less than an hour after an annual anti-seismic exercise, AFP noted.
Magnitude of 7.4
At 1:05 p.m. local time (6:05 p.m. GMT), residents of Mexico City returned to the streets in panic when the seismic alert sounded, for good this time, after the earthquake simulation organized each September 19 by the authorities. .
"There are no consequences in Mexico so far" but "we continue to collect information," said the mayor of the capital Claudia Sheinbaum.
A metro line had to be evacuated due to power cuts, she added.
At the time of the earthquake, Claudia Sheinbaum was still at the police operations center from where she had overseen the annual drill 46 minutes earlier.
"There is nothing that tells us scientifically that September 19 is a special day for an earthquake to occur," said the mayor of Mexico City, a physicist by training.
The epicenter was located towards the Pacific, in the state of Michoacan (west), several hundred kilometers west of the capital, at a depth of 15 km underground.
The National Seismological Service first spoke of an earthquake with a magnitude of 6.8, then 7.4.
Minor damage
Only minor damage was recorded in Michoacan, according to an AFP correspondent.
"We are carrying out an assessment", indicated the local civil protection.
President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador announced that there was one death in the neighboring state of Colima (west) following the fall of a fence at a shopping center, citing a Navy official.
Every September 19, during the annual anti-seismic exercise, residents must evacuate their homes or workplaces at the first alarm, to reach “meeting points” indicated in each district.
In September 2021, a 7.1 earthquake southeast of Acapulco, in the state of Guerrero, killed one person and damaged businesses and homes.
On September 19, 2017, a magnitude 7.1 quake killed 369 people.
The earth had also shaken at midday, after the annual simulacrum.
Entire buildings had collapsed in the center of the capital.
On September 19, 1985, an 8.1 magnitude earthquake devastated central Mexico City, killing more than 10,000 people, most of them in the capital.
Located on the Pacific Ring of Fire, an area where the meeting of tectonic plates causes high seismic activity, Mexico lives under the threat of large-scale earthquakes.
The capital Mexico is particularly vulnerable in its part built on the old pre-Hispanic lake, covered over the centuries.
With AFP
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