Mexico was severely jolted overnight by its most powerful earthquake in a century, which killed at least 58 people as it struck the Pacific coast, officials said yesterday.
President Enrique Peña Nieto described the 8.2-magnitude quake as “a major earthquake in scale and magnitude, the strongest in the past 100 years.”
The southeastern Pacific coast states of Oaxaca and Chiapas appeared to have borne the brunt of the damage, with 45 people killed in Oaxaca alone, Governor Alejandro Murat said.
The worst destruction appeared to be in Juchitan, in the state of Oaxaca, where 17 people were confirmed dead, according to the head of the emergency response agency, Ricardo de la Cruz. Officials said the death toll there could rise.
“There are houses that collapsed with people inside,” Luis Felipe Puente, the agency’s director general, told TV news channel Milenio.
A hotel also collapsed in Juchitan, the town hall partly caved in and many homes were badly damaged.
Two children were killed in neighbouring Tabasco state, the governor said. One was crushed by a collapsing wall. The other, an infant on a respirator, died after the quake triggered a power outage.
The quake epicentre was about 100 kilometres from the coastal town of Tonala, in far southern Chiapas state, and hit at 11.49pm Thursday local time, Mexico’s seismologic service said. The US Geological Survey put the magnitude slightly lower, at 8.1. That is the same as a devastating 1985 earthquake that killed more than 10,000 people in Mexico City – the country’s most destructive ever.
The quake shook a large swathe of the country and was felt as far north as Mexico City – some 800 kilometres from the epicentre – where people fled their homes after hearing sirens go off as buildings trembled and swayed. Many were in their night clothes. Some carried babies and pets in their arms as they stumbled onto the streets.
Hurricanes. The quake occurred as Mexican authorities were bracing for the impact of Hurricane Katia, which strengthened to a Category Two storm as it rumbled towards the state of Veracruz on the Gulf Coast. It is one of three active hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean alongside Irma and Jose.
Mexico is particularly vulnerable to hurricanes, given its location and its Pacific and Atlantic coastlines, and is hit by a least a dozen weather events a year.
High winds and bad weather disrupted emergency relief efforts for hurricane-hit islands in the Caribbean on Friday as local authorities attempted to deliver aid and prevent looting.
Two days after Irma swept over the eastern part of region, devastating thousands of homes, some islands braced for a second battering from Jose this weekend.
Officials on the island of Guadeloupe, where French aid efforts are being coordinated, suspended boat crossings to the hardest-hit territories of St Martin and St Barthelemy where at least 10 people were killed by Irma on Wednesday. Jose strengthened to a Category Four hurricane yesterday, packing winds of up to 200 kmph. It is barrelling along a similar path as Irma toward hard-hit St Martin, Anguilla, Barbuda and the British Virgin Islands , among others, then onto Florida.
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