Strong quake jolts Mexico days after powerful temblor killed at least two
Mexico City — A powerful earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.8 struck Mexico early Thursday, causing buildings to sway and leaving at least one person dead in the nation's capital. Residents huddled in streets as seismic alarms blared.
The temblor hit shortly after 1 a.m., just three days after a 7.6-magnitude quake shook western and central Mexico, killing two.
The U.S. Geological Survey said Thursday's quake, like Monday's, was centered in the western state of Michoacan near the Pacific coast. The epicenter was about 29 miles south-southwest of Aguililla, Michoacan, at a depth of about 15 miles.
Michoacan's government said the quake was felt throughout the state. It reported damage to a building in the city of Uruapan and some landslides on the highway that connects Michoacan and Guerrero with the coast.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador tweeted that it was an aftershock from Monday's quake and was also felt in the states of Colima, Jalisco and Guerrero.
Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum said via Twitter that one woman died in a central neighborhood when she fell down the stairs of her home.
The latest quake rattled an already jittery country.
Monday's more powerful one was the third major quake to strike on Sept. 19 - in 1985, 2017 and now 2022.
The 2017 and 2022 quakes came very shortly after the earthquake drills conducted every Sept. 19 to commemorate the devastating 1985 temblor that killed some 9,500 people.
The date of Monday's tremor was only a coincidence, the national seismological agency said, according to Agence France-Presse. "There is no scientific reason to explain it," the agency noted.