The Central American country is hit by a powerful earthquake on the same day that two other telluric movements in 1985 and 2017 caused more than 20,000 deaths: the chance of such a coincidence is two in a hundred million
This Monday at 7:19 AM, the President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, pressed the button to raise the national flag in Zócalo Square and honor the thousands who died in the earthquakes that occurred on September 19, but 1985 and 2017 , in the middle of the country. Later, at 12:19 p.m., the president left his office and went to the central courtyard of the government building to participate in an antiseismic exercise. It rained gently. A few miles away, relatives of the 49 people who lost their lives five years ago when a building at 286 Álvaro Obregón Street, due to vibrations, held a ceremony in their honor. And a little further, on the esplanade of the Rébsamen College, a priest celebrated a mass for the 26 deceased in this center, 19 of them children, during the damn 2017 when the federal district ground shook like a whip.
And suddenly the underground regained his memory. An earthquake measuring 7.7 degrees on the Richter scale shook Coalcomán, a municipality in Michoacán state, and terrified Mexicans. The seismic wave hit half the country, about 15 states, on Monday, displacing those who took part in the tribute. It was 1:05 PM. The exercise, which was held sixty minutes earlier, also suddenly became a reality show. Emergency services took to the streets to shout with megaphones that it was not an exercise. 13,707 seismic alarm loudspeakers sounded throughout the capital. López Obrador answered the phone. Someone told him that in Michoacán dozens of houses had been demolished as if they were cardboard models and that there was one fatality, which later rose to two when witnesses explained to police that a person had been crushed under the rubble of a shopping center.
The possibility that an earthquake of more than 7 degrees will repeat on the same day in three different years is “ridiculously small,” said Ana Meda, an academic in the Faculty of Science at the Autonomous University of Mexico. The coincidence has stunned seismologists around the world, although they are aware that the country is at a high earthquake risk. One expert estimates that such an accurate sequence is two chances in a hundred million. Professionals at 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 worst affected states. Of the latter are the two deceased persons. A woman died when the tent 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. At least 400 buildings and houses have been destroyed in Coalcomán. In Michoacán, authorities report damage to three hospitals and 20 medical centers. There is still no final balance of the injured. A woman and two minors are known to have been injured in the explosion of a gas tanker in Tecomán. Even in the country’s capital, several buildings were cracked. Video footage shows entire streets covered in broken glass and scenes of panic in the streets, offices and subways. “Everything thundered and I was afraid this would collapse and we would be buried. I thought about my baby, I thought I would never see him again,” María del Carmen Ruiz, owner of a beauty parlor in Apatzingán, told El Universal. “No, not again! My God, not again, not!” was heard at the ceremony at Rébsamen College, where the relatives of those who died in 2017 held their hands together in a minute of silence as the earth broke.
This Tuesday there is confusion and a certain sense of chaos in the affected areas. Hundreds of technicians check buildings, roads, railways and power lines for damage. In Michoacán and the surrounding states, the road network is seriously damaged. Dozens of bridges have been closed until inspection. “Now we need to find out how stable the infrastructure is so as not to increase the number of casualties,” said one of the 16,000 members of the police who participated in the seismic exercise this Monday and are distributing aid to the derelict areas today.
In 2017, it was a similar earthquake with a magnitude of 7.1 and with an epicenter between Puebla and Morelos, killing nearly 370. The majority, 228, are in Mexico City. In 1985, another powerful 8.1-degree earthquake killed 20,000, making it the most devastating earthquake the country has suffered. Laura Velázquez, National Coordinator for Civil Protection, has reported that the earthquakes recorded from that year to 2021 caused 6,551 deaths and affected 16.8 million Mexicans.
Source: La Verdad
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