A powerful earthquake struck off the coast of Mexico early this morning and was felt as far away as Mexico City, reports said, the New York Times reports.
The quake had a magnitude of 8.1 and struck about 60 miles, or 96 kilometers, southwest of Pijijiapan, off the coast of Chiapas State, near the border with Guatemala.
The United States Geological Survey issued a tsunami warning right after the quake hit.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said that tsunami waves “reaching more than three meters above the tide level are possible along the coasts of Mexico.” There is a coastal evacuation in Chiapas state.
USGS: The September 8th, 2017, M 8.1 earthquake offshore Chiapas, Mexico, occurred as the result of normal faulting at an intermediate depth. Focal mechanism solutions for the earthquake indicate slip occurred on either a fault dipping very shallowly towards the southwest, or on steeply dipping fault striking NW-SE. At the location of this event, the Cocos plate converges with North America at a rate of approximately 76 mm/yr, in a northeast direction. The Cocos plate begins its subduction beneath Central America at the Middle America Trench, just over 100 km to the southwest of this earthquake. The location, depth, and normal-faulting mechanism of this earthquake indicate that it is likely an intraplate event, within the subducting Cocos slab, rather than on the shallower megathrust plate boundary interface.
While commonly plotted as points on maps, earthquakes of this size are more appropriately described as slip over a larger fault area. Normal-faulting events of the size of [this] earthquake are typically about 200×50 km (length x width).
Over the preceding century, the region within 250 km of the hypocenter of the September 8th, 2017 earthquake has experienced 8 other M 7+ earthquakes. Most occurred in the subduction zone to the southeast of the September 8 event, near the Mexico-Guatemala border, and none were larger than M 7.5. The largest, a M 7.4 thrust faulting earthquake offshore Guatemala in November 2012, resulted in at least 48 fatalities and over 150 injuries, and significant damage near the coast.
Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto tweeted that he was in contact with the country’s center for disaster prevention. Schools have been closed in Mexico City and Chiapas state.
“I felt the earthquake in our neighborhood near downtown,” said Joel Petterson, a New York Times employee on vacation in Mexico City. “Our building started swaying about 20 minutes ago, and many people went out into the street.”
URGENTE | Terremoto de 8.0 en la Ciudad de México, según informó el Servicio Sismológico Nacional (SSN). pic.twitter.com/Viv01pkPQp
— Yusnaby Pérez (@Yusnaby) September 8, 2017
Five aftershocks of magnitude 4.9 or stronger hit within an hour of the initial quake, the United States Geological Survey said. A tsunami with the largest wave measuring less than four feet was recorded on Mexico’s Pacific Coast, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said.
“The scariest part of it all is that if you are an adult and you’ve lived in this city your adult life, you remember 1985 very vividly. This felt as strong and as bad, but from what I see, we’ve been spared from major tragedy,” the Times quoted Alberto Briseño, a 58-year-old bar manager in Condesa, near Mexico City, as saying. “Now we will do what us Mexicans do so well: Take the bitter taste of this night and move on.”
The 1985 earthquake was centered much closer to Mexico City and caused thousands of deaths.
Towns near Mexico’s border with Guatemala were hardest hit.
Socorristas de #CruzRojaGT reportan daños en Tacaná, San Marcos. pic.twitter.com/zn4OVwn91x
— CruzRojaGT (@CRGuatemalteca) September 8, 2017
