Downtown Mexico City was shaken this Thursday, December 7, 2023 by an earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 5.8, the Mexican Seismological Service said.
Residents took to the streets of the capital when the earthquake alarm sounded shortly after 2 p.m. local time, Agence France-Presse noted. The epicenter was in the state of Puebla, southwest of the megacity with more than nine million inhabitants.
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People wait outside their homes and buildings after an earthquake struck Mexico City on December 7, 2023. | HENRY ROMERO/Portal View full screen
People wait outside their homes and buildings after an earthquake struck Mexico City on December 7, 2023. | HENRY ROMERO/Portal
“It seems that the shock was not that strong,” says the president
“There are no reports of damage in Mexico City”Mayor Marti Batres immediately responded to X (ex-Twitter).
The President of the Republic, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, also wanted to reassure: “It seems that the tremor was not that strong”.
A magnitude 6 earthquake in October
The Mexican capital was struck by a magnitude 8.1 earthquake on September 19, 1985, which devastated much of the city and killed 12,843 people. This emerges from a count of official death certificates published 20 years later, in 2015, by the Excelsior newspaper. Civil organizations At that time it was estimated that 20,000 people would die.
Thirty-two years to the day later, on September 19, 2017, a magnitude 7.1 earthquake caused 369 deaths and extensive damage in the central neighborhoods of Mexico City. In 2022, on September 19, the earth shook for the third time in a row without causing any casualties, AFP recalls.
On October 7, a magnitude 6 earthquake struck the south of the country without causing any fatalities. However, the tremors were felt as far away as Mexico City and caused property damage.
A warning system has been set up
In the event of an earthquake, alarms are triggered in the streets and buildings, warning the population one minute before the earthquake.
Mexico lies between five tectonic plates, whose movements make the country one of the most seismic in the world, especially on the Pacific coast to the west.