The Mexico City earthquake in 1985 and 2017 killed thousands of people combined, and now CNN reports a 7.7 magnitude earthquake has once again hit Mexico's capital city.
The powerful earthquake rocked the southwestern coast of Mexico on Monday, the same day as the two previous disasters. The recent earthquake killed at least one person and the shaking was reported as far away as Mexico City.
No Impending Tsunami After the Earthquake
The US Geological Survey data said that the earthquake hit a little over 1 pm EST, with the epicenter occurring near the coastline in Mexico. About 62 miles (100 kilometers) from the epicenter, very strong shakes capable of "moderate" damage were reported in Colima. Meanwhile, Mexico City, which is 310 miles (500 kilometers) away, also reports "light to moderate" sharking.
Local firefighters closed some buildings because of public concerns about collapse. Unfortunately, President López Obrador announced that one person lost his life in a shopping center in Manzanillo after a fence fell, citing a report from the Secretary of the Navy, José Rafael Ojeda Durán. Mexico City mayor Claudia Sheinbaum said there are no known casualties or damage yet in the city.
The USGS initially reported the earthquake as a 7.6-magnitude, but the country's national seismological agency later updated it to 7.7-magnitude during a press conference, CNN reported.
A tsunami warning was issued immediately after the earthquake, but it was later revised because the threat had "largely passed" per the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center. Experts predicted a 9.8-feet (3-meter) wave to hit Mexico along the Pacific coasts of Costa Rica, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, and Peru, but there was a decrease in wave heights.
Members of the Mexican Army check cracks in the streets after an earthquake caused by a geological fault in Ciudad Guzman, Jalisco state, Mexico, on June 22, 2022.
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Earthquakes in Mexico Over the Years
On Sept. 19, 2017, Mexico was also hit by a 7.1-magnitude earthquake that killed as many as 216 people. According to CNN, it happened 2.8 miles (4.5 kilometers) east-northeast of San Juan Raboso and 34.1 miles (55 kilometers) south-southwest of Puebla City.
Thousands of soldiers, rescuers and even civilians worked together to dig through tall piles of rubble from dozens of crumbled buildings. Some carried buckets of debris, while others called out names of rescued people. The earthquake left the city in chaos, with all the falling buildings and thousands of people running away.
A similar event happened several decades before, known as the Mexico City earthquake of 1985 or the Michoacan earthquake of 1985. Per Britannica Encyclopedia, the 8.0-magnitude earthquake occurred on Sept. 19, 1985, off the coast of the Mexican state of Michoacan, and killed at least 10,000 people.
Can Earthquakes Happen in the Same Place Twice?
According to a 2019 paper published in the Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences, repeating earthquakes are identical in location and geometry but happen at different times. These repeaters represent a recurring seismic energy release from distinct geological structures, like a slip on a fault patch.
They are usually found on creeping plate boundary faults and can be used to track fault creep. Such structures are mainly hosted in volcanoes, subducted slabs, mining-induced fault structures, glaciers, and landslides.
Small differences in these repeaters could give insights into the changes in source properties of the rocks through which the wave propagates to learn the earthquake triggering mechanism and reveal seismic changes in rupture characteristics.
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