Mexico City was hit with a major 7.6 magnitude earthquake on Monday, leaving at least two people dead and causing destruction across the country’s Capitol city.
The earthquake came on the same day of that two previous tremors had hit the city, one in 1985 and another in 2017.
“It seems like a curse,” Isa Montes, a 34-year-old resident of the city’s central Roma neighborhood, told Reuters, Ernesto Lanzetta — a business owner in the Cuauhtemoc borough of the city — telling the outlet, “It’s this date. There’s something about the 19th. The 19th is a day to be feared.”
Photos of the devastation show buildings collapsed and streets closed off. Areas of the city also experienced power outages, while several hospitals experienced damages.
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On Tuesday, president Andrés Manuel López Obrador held a live conference, which he shared onTwitter, concerning the tragedy.
“We’re going to start compiling information and hope with all our hearts that nothing serious has happened,” Obrador said in part, perAOL.
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The 16-year-old was in a hotel with family and added, “In the hotel, the roof of the parking area boomed and fell to the ground, and there are cracks in the walls on the second floor,” she said.
Monday’s earthquake struck just after 1 p.m. in Colima, about 400 miles west of Mexico City.
Alarms went off in the city, as well in Puerto Vallarta, located about 200 miles south of the Colima, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said.
According to theU.S. Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, the quake was so strong that a tsunami warning for coastal areas was issued afterwards.
“Seas given as significant wave height, which is the average height of the highest 1/3 of the waves. Individual waves may be more than twice the significant wave height,” their official post noted.
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As for the significance of Sept. 19, the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) noted that there was no scientific explanation for three major earthquakes happening on the same date in history.
Mexico is one of the most active seismic regions in the world, the country sitting upon three large tectonic plates.
“We knew we’d get this question as soon as it happened,” Earle added. “Sometimes there are just coincidences.”
Both previous earthquakes wreaked massive demonstration. In 1985, 5,000 of people were killed from the natural disaster, while 350 people perished due to the 2017 earthquake.
source: people.com
