The Central American country suffers a powerful earthquake on the same day that two other telluric movements caused more than 20,000 deaths in 1985 and 2017: the probability of such a coincidence is two in a hundred million
At 7:19 a.m. this Monday, the president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, pressed the button to raise the national flag in the Zócalo square and honor the thousands who died in the earthquakes that occurred on September 19, but 1985 and 2017, in the center of the country. Later, at 12:19, the president left his office and went to the central courtyard of the Government building to participate in an anti-seismic drill. It was raining lightly. A few kilometers away, the relatives of the 49 people who lost their lives five years ago when a building collapsed at number 286 Álvaro Obregón Street due to tremors were holding a ceremony in their honor. And a little further, on the esplanade of the Rébsamen College, a priest officiated a mass for the 26 deceased in this center, 19 of them children, during the damned 2017 in which the ground of the federal district shook like a whip.
And suddenly, the underground regained its memory. An earthquake measuring 7.7 degrees on the Richter scale fiercely shook Coalcomán, a municipality in the state of Michoacán, and returned Mexicans to terror. The seismic wave hit half the country on Monday, about fifteen states, and put those who participated in the tributes to flight. It was 1:05 p.m. The drill, held sixty minutes earlier, also suddenly became a reality show. The emergency services went out into the street to shout, megaphone in hand, that it was not a drill. 13,707 seismic alarm loudspeakers sounded throughout the capital. López Obrador picked up the phone. Someone informed him that in Michoacán dozens of houses had been broken as if they were cardboard models and that there was one fatality, which later rose to two when witnesses explained to the Police that a person was crushed under the rubble of a shopping center.
Image of the emergency drill for earthquakes carried out in Mexico City one hour before the real earthquake occurred /
The possibility that an earthquake greater than 7 degrees will be repeated on the same day in three different years is “ridiculously small,” says Ana Meda, an academic at the Faculty of Sciences of the Autonomous University of Mexico. The coincidence has seismologists from all over the world plunged into astonishment, even though they are aware that the country is at high earthquake risk. One expert estimates that such a precise sequence is two chances in a hundred million. Professionals from the National Seismological Institute agree that it is an “unpleasant coincidence”, although “there is no scientific reason to explain or justify it”.
Michoacán, Jalisco and Colima are the three most affected states. Of the latter are the two deceased people. A woman died when the marquee of a store in Manzanillo fell on her, while a man lost his life crushed by the roof of a shopping center in Punto Bahía. Ten municipalities have recorded significant damage. In Coalcomán, at least 400 buildings and houses have been destroyed. In Michoacán, the authorities mention damage to three hospitals and twenty medical centers. There is still no definitive balance of the wounded. It is known that a woman and two minors were injured in the explosion of a gas tanker in Tecomán. Even in the country’s capital, several buildings were cracked. Video images show entire streets carpeted with broken glass and scenes of panic in the street, offices and subways. «Everything thundered and I was afraid that this would collapse and we would be buried. My baby came to mind, I thought I was never going to see him again,” María del Carmen Ruiz, owner of a beauty studio in Apatzingán, told ‘El Universal’. “No, not again! My God, not again, not!”, could be heard at the ceremony of the Rébsamen College, where the relatives of those who died in 2017 kept their hands clasped in a minute of silence when the earth broke.
Hundreds of Mexicans remain on the streets in the capital after being evacuated from their offices after the earthquake /
This Tuesday, confusion and a certain sense of chaos reigns in the affected territories. Hundreds of technicians check buildings, roads, railway lines and power lines for damage. In Michoacán and the surrounding states, the road network suffers serious damage. Dozens of bridges have been closed until inspected. “Now we have to find out to what extent the infrastructures are stable so as not to increase the number of victims,” says one of the 16,000 members of the Police who participated in the seismic drill this Monday and today distribute aid or cordon off the dilapidated areas.
In 2017, it was a similar earthquake, of magnitude 7.1 and with an epicenter between Puebla and Morelos, which left almost 370 dead. The majority, 228, in Mexico City. In 1985, another powerful earthquake of 8.1 degrees caused 20,000 fatalities, which makes it the most devastating earthquake suffered by the country. Laura Velázquez, national coordinator of Civil Protection, has reported that the earthquakes recorded from that year to 2021 have caused 6,551 deaths and affected 16.8 million Mexicans.
#September #fateful #date #earthquakes #shake #Mexico