Magnitude 7.6 earthquake shakes Mexico's Pacific coast; 1 dead
MEXICO CITY -- A magnitude 7.6 earthquake shook Mexico's central Pacific coast on Monday, setting off an earthquake alarm in the capital and leaving one person dead in the coastal city of Manzanillo.
There were no immediate reports of damage from the quake that hit at 1:05 p.m. local time, according to the U.S. Geologic Survey. Initial reports put the earthquake at magnitude 7.5, but the USGS upgraded the quake to a 7.6 a short time later.
UPDATE: Another earthquake rocks Mexico; 2 dead in 6.8 magnitude Michoacan aftershock
The earthquake was centered in a remote coastal area of the state of Michoacán, but was felt as far away as Mexico City and Puerto Vallarta, according to social media posts. There were online reports of buildings swaying in the Mexican capital with some structures being evacuated.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said via Twitter that the secretary of the Navy told him one person was killed in the port city of Manzanillo, Colima, when a wall at a mall collapsed.
Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum tweeted that there were no reports of damage in the capital.
Michoacan's Public Security Department said there were no immediate reports of significant damage in that state beyond some cracks in buildings in the town of Coalcoman. Some news outlets were reporting damage to historical buildings as far north as Guadalajara.
The quake comes on the September 19th anniversary of two major deadly earthquakes that struck Mexico City in 1985 and 2017. Alarms for the new quake came less than an hour after a quake alarms warbled in a nationwide earthquake simulation marking the anniversary of those two powerful temblors.
Humberto Garza stood outside a restaurant in Mexico City's Roma neighborhood holding his 3-year son. Like many milling about outside after the earthquake, Garza said that the earthquake alarm sounded so soon after the annual simulation that he was not sure it was real.
"I heard the alarm, but it sounded really far away," he said.
Outside the city's environmental ombudsman's office, dozens of employees waited. Some appeared visibly shaken.
Power was out in parts of the city, including stoplights, snarling the capital's already notorious traffic.
Mexico's National Civil Defense agency said that the navy's tsunami center had not issued an alert because due to the epicenter's location, no variation in sea levels was expected. However, that contradicted an alert from the U.S. Tsunami Warning Center. It said that hazardous tsunami waves reaching one to three meters above the tide level were possible for coasts within 186 miles (300 kilometers) of the epicenter.
