A powerful earthquake struck Mexico on Thursday, sending people onto the streets of the capital in the middle of the night, days after a powerful tremor killed at least two people.
The epicenter of the magnitude 6.9 quake was near the Pacific coast, 84 kilometers (52 miles) south of Coalcoman in the western state of Michoacan, the national seismological agency reported.
The US Geological Survey (USGS) estimated the magnitude at 6.8.
A powerful 7.7-magnitude earthquake struck Michoacan on Monday, damaging several thousand buildings and causing panic in Mexico City, more than 400 kilometers away.
The latest tremor triggered early warning alarms again in the capital at 1:16 a.m. (0616 GMT), causing buildings to shake and sway.
Many people quickly left their homes when the alarm sounded, some still in pajamas and carrying their dogs.
“We had a magnitude 6.9 aftershock with an epicenter in Coalcoman,” President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Twitter.
“It was felt in Michoacan (and the other states) Colima, Jalisco, Guerrero and Mexico City. So far there have been no reports of damage,” he added.
Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum said official helicopters had flown over the city and there were no initial reports of destruction.
“So far there is no damage in the city after the earthquake,” she tweeted.
The quake struck at a depth of 12 kilometers, according to the national seismological agency, while the USGS estimated the depth at 24 kilometers, about 410 kilometers from Mexico City.
– Traumatic Anniversary –
Monday’s quake came less than an hour after millions of people in Mexico City took part in emergency drills to mark the anniversary of two deadly earthquakes in 1985 and 2017.
The timing of Monday’s quake was nothing more than coincidence, the national seismological agency said.
“There is no scientific reason to explain this,” he added.
On September 19, 1985, an 8.1 magnitude tremor killed more than 10,000 people and destroyed hundreds of buildings.
On the anniversary of that quake in 2017, a magnitude 7.1 tremor killed around 370 people, mostly in the capital.
During Monday’s earthquake, a man was killed by falling debris at a mall in Manzanillo, in the western state of Colima.
A woman later died from injuries caused by a collapsing wall in the same town.
Mexico lies in the world’s most seismically and volcanically active zone, known as the Ring of Fire, where the Pacific Plate meets the surrounding tectonic plates.
Mexico City, which together with the surrounding cities is home to more than 20 million people, is built in a natural basin filled with the sediments of a former lake, making it particularly vulnerable to earthquakes.
The capital has an early warning system using seismic monitors that should give residents enough time to evacuate buildings if earthquakes hit seismic zones near the Pacific coast
