1 dead after earthquake strikes Mexico’s Pacific coast

Mexico was shaken Monday by a magnitude 7.6 earthquake on its Pacific coast that killed at least one person.

The quake struck around 1:05 p.m. local time in southwest Mexico about 23 miles from southeast of Aquila and damaged buildings. The quake was powerful enough to set off a seismic alarm in Mexico City, more than 410 miles east.

The sole death occurred when a wall at a mall in the port city of Manzanillo, Colima, about 85 miles north of the epicenter, collapsed.

“We’re going to start compiling information and hope with all our hearts that nothing serious has happened,” President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said in a video.

Witnesses described the quake as prolonged and strong.

Carla Cárdenas, 16, of Coalcoman, said buildings had cracked walls and damaged roofs.

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“In the hotel, the roof of the parking area boomed and fell to the ground, and there are cracks in the walls on the second floor,” she said.

The U.S. Tsunami Warning Center warned that waves were possible for coasts within fewer than 190 miles from the epicenter. The waves could reach as high as 3 feet and may have already arrived in certain areas.

Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama and Peru could all see smaller waves.

The quake actually came about an hour after a nationwide earthquake simulation held today because of deadly earthquakes that happened on the same date in 1985, which killed as many as 10,000 people in Mexico City, and 2017, which killed 216 people in the capital.

U.S. Geological Survey seismologist Paul Earle said that was merely a coincidence.

“There’s no physical reason or statistical bias toward earthquakes in any given month in Mexico.”

With News Wire Services