Sunday, September 10, 2017
Death toll rises in aftermath of powerful earthquake in Mexico
Death toll rises in aftermath of powerful earthquake in Mexico
A view of a partially collapsed hotel in Matias Romero, Oaxaca state, Mexico, Friday, Sept. 8, 2017.
FELIX MARQUEZ / AP
JUCHITAN, Mexico -- One of the most powerful earthquakes ever to hit Mexico was followed by a Gulf coast hurricane, dealing a one-two punch to the country, killing at least 61 people as workers scrambled to respond to the twin national emergencies.
The 8.1 quake off the southern Pacific coast just before midnight Thursday toppled hundreds of buildings in several states. Hardest-hit was Juchitan, Oaxaca, where 36 people died and a third of the city's homes collapsed or were uninhabitable, President Enrique Pena Nieto said late Friday in an interview with the Televisa news network.
In downtown Juchitan, the remains of brick walls and clay tile roofs cluttered streets as families dragged mattresses onto sidewalks to spend a second anxious night sleeping outdoors. Some were newly homeless, while others feared further aftershocks could topple their cracked adobe dwellings.
"We are all collapsed, our homes and our people," said Rosa Elba Ortiz Santiago, 43, who sat with her teenage son and more than a dozen neighbors on an assortment of chairs. "We are used to earthquakes, but not of this magnitude."
Even as she spoke, across the country, Hurricane Katia was roaring onshore north of Tecolutla in Veracruz state, pelting the region with intense rains and winds.
The U.S. National Hurricane Center reported Katia's maximum sustained winds had dropped to 75 mph when it made landfall. And it rapidly weakened even further over land into a tropical depression before dawn. The government of Mexico has since discontinued all tropical storm warnings.
The center said Katia was stalling over Mexico's Sierra Madre mountains, where it could bring 10 to 15 inches of rain to a region with a history of deadly mudslides and flooding.
Pena Nieto announced that the earthquake killed 45 people in Oaxaca state, 12 in Chiapas and 4 in Tabasco, and he declared three days of national mourning. The toll included 36 dead in Juchitan, located on the narrow waist of Oaxaca known as the Isthmus, where a hospital and about half the city hall also collapsed into rubble.
Next to Ortiz, 47-year-old Jose Alberto Martinez said he and family members have long been accustomed to earthquakes. So when the ground started moving, at first they simply waited a bit for it to stop -- until objects began falling and they bolted for the street.
"We felt like the house was coming down on top of us," Martinez said, accompanied by his wife, son and mother-in-law.
Now, he didn't feel safe going back inside until the home is inspected. Right next door, an older building had crumbled into a pile of rough timbers, brick and stucco, while little remained of a white church on the corner.
Rescuers searched for survivors Friday with sniffer dogs and used heavy machinery at the main square to pull rubble away from city hall, where a missing police officer was believed to be inside.
The city's civil defense coordinator, Jose Antonio Marin Lopez, said similar searches had been going on all over the area.
Teams found bodies in the rubble, but the highlight was pulling four people, including two children, alive from the completely collapsed Hotel Del Rio where one woman died.
"The priority continues to be the people," Marin said.
Pena Nieto said authorities were working to re-establish supplies of water and food and provide medical attention to those who need it. He vowed the government would help rebuild.
"The power of this earthquake was devastating, but we are certain that the power of unity, the power of solidarity and the power of shared responsibility will be greater," Pena Nieto said.
Power was cut at least briefly to more than 1.8 million people, and authorities closed schools in at least 11 states to check them for safety.
The Interior Department reported that 428 homes were destroyed and 1,700 were damaged just in Chiapas, the state closest to the epicenter.
"Homes made of clay tiles and wood collapsed," said Nataniel Hernandez, a human rights worker living in Tonala, Chiapas, who worried that inclement weather threatened to bring more structures down.
"Right now it is raining very hard in Tonala, and with the rains it gets much more complicated because the homes were left very weak, with cracks," Hernandez said by phone.
The earthquake also jolted the Mexican capital, more than 650 miles away, which largely lies atop a former lakebed whose soil amplifies seismic waves. Memories are still fresh for many of a catastrophic quake that killed thousands and devastated large parts of the city in 1985.
Mexico City escaped major damage, though part of a bridge on a highway being built to a new international airport collapsed due to the earthquake, local media reported.
The quake's power was equal to Mexico's strongest in the past century, and it was slightly stronger than the 1985 quake, the U.S. Geological Survey said. However its impact was blunted somewhat by the fact that it struck some 100 miles offshore.
The epicenter was in a seismic hotspot in the Pacific where one tectonic plate dives under another. Such subduction zones are responsible for some of the biggest quakes in history, including the 2011 Fukushima disaster and the 2004 Sumatra quake that spawned a deadly tsunami.
In the Gulf coast state of Veracruz, tourists abandoned coastal hotels as winds and rains picked up ahead of Hurricane Katia's landfall and workers set up emergency shelters.
"The arrival of #Katia may be particularly dangerous for slopes affected by the earthquake. Avoid these areas," Pena Nieto tweeted.
Saturday, September 9, 2017
Kate Kiekhaefer added 3 new photos. Yesterday at 6:27am · We are fine, evaluating damages after the quake and we only 4 lost shower tiles
We are fine, evaluating damages after the quake and we only 4 lost shower tiles
How Mexico Lived its Strongest Earthquake in a Century fabiolaofmexico in Mexican lifestyle 9 September, 2017 541 Words
https://myheartofmexico.wordpress.com/2017/09/09/how-mexico-lived-its-strongest-earthquake-in-a-century/
How Mexico Lived its Strongest Earthquake in a Century
On Thursday, September 7th, 2017, a few minutes before midnight, Mexico lived through its strongest earthquake in a century. This is what happened.
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The earthquake struck at 11:50 PM. It was a magnitude 8.2 on the Richter scale and it lasted an incredible 3 minutes and 49 seconds.
The southeastern provinces of Oaxaca and Chiapas were most damaged by the earthquake. These are lovely but poor provinces, with many small towns and villages in remote areas. Sadly, the devastation there was severe.
Just to clarify, I don’t live anywhere near the devastated area of Oaxaca and Chiapas. I live in the Mexico City area, and although the quake did hit us, it wasn’t intense enough to cause real damage here.
But the quake was strong enough to bring back terrifying memories of the deadly 1985 earthquake, so crowds of people emptied entire apartment buildings and walked out into the street in their pajamas until the Civil Protection Agency announced it was safe to go back in.
The next day, schools and public office buildings in 11 states closed so Civil Protection officials could check for any damages. We don’t play around with natural disasters in Mexico.
Despite the emergency, personal story is not exciting at all. I slept through the earthquake. Yes, I know it’s hard to believe, but I went to bed at 10:00 PM and I didn’t feel a thing. I woke up the next day and found out about the earthquake from the news.
So this is what happened while I was sleeping like a baby.
How Mexico Lived Through its Strongest Earthquake in a Century
The quake rattled office and apartment buildings in Mexico City.
Midnight traffic was brought to a standstill.
The quake set off seismic alarms in Mexico City as the iconic Angel of Independence swayed back and forth.
These strange lights appeared in the night sky during the earthquake, like lightning without thunder. These are flashes of static electricity released into the atmosphere by the friction of rocks and minerals underground.
Weird, right?
In the southeastern provinces of Oaxaca and Chiapas, the earthquake and the devastation were stronger.
In Chiapas, people barely had time to run out of buildings before they collapsed.
The city of Juchitan, Oaxaca, was nearly destroyed by the earthquake, but people there are still standing strong.
#Video Citizen of #Juchitan carry a Mexican flag right in front of the destroyed City Hall pic.twitter.com/qjJBfTclnI #Temblor#PrayForMéxico
Destruction in Juchitan, Oaxaca.
Although this earthquake didn’t damage Mexico City, the city of Juchitan was nearly destroyed and its population will need plenty of aid to get back on its feet.
The people of Juchitan are simply unprepared to deal with this sort of catastrophe, so Mexican citizens are already lining up to contribute to earthquake relief. You can contribute too.
El drama que se vive en Juchitán tras terremoto que ha dejado por lo menos 25 muertos en Oaxaca goo.gl/19WXCe
How to Help Mexico Earthquake Victims
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