A magnitude 6 earthquake was recorded in southern Mexico on the night of Friday to Saturday. The tremors were felt as far away as Mexico City and caused property damage without causing any casualties, according to local authorities.
The epicenter of the earthquake was in the city of Matias Romero, Oaxaca state, said the national seismological service on X (formerly Twitter), which had previously estimated the earthquake’s magnitude at 6.3.
At this point, no “loss of life” has been reported, Oaxaca government secretary Jesus Romero told the press.
However, the earthquake damaged roads, particularly the road leading to the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, the narrow stretch of Mexican territory that separates the Pacific Ocean from the Atlantic Ocean, the official said.
In the city of Oaxaca, building fences were damaged by the earthquake, and a building housing a hospital and a road bridge were also damaged, Mr. Romero explained, adding that there were also power outages.
“We continue to monitor the epicenter area” of the earthquake, the Mexican government’s civil protection agency had previously said on social networks.
The earthquake was felt in several areas of the Mexican capital, prompting an alarm that led dozens of people to leave their homes.
“We felt a slight shock,” Marti Batres, the mayor of Mexico City, home to nearly nine million people, said on X. “No damage was reported at this point,” he added.
Authorities are “assessing the possible impacts” of the earthquake across Oaxaca state, its governor Salomon Jara said.
Mexico lies on the “Pacific Ring of Fire,” an area where the collision of tectonic plates causes high levels of seismic activity.
On September 19, 2017, a magnitude 7.1 earthquake killed 369 people, most of them in Mexico City. In 1985, an 8.1 magnitude earthquake devastated the center of the capital, killing more than 10,000 people.