7.6 Earthquake hits Mexico

Re: 7.9 Mexico City Earthquake

7.6...Isn't one of Obama's kids down there?

 

Re: 7.9 Earthquake hits Mexico

Wow, that's a big one. I don't know what the infrastructure is like there, but I can't imagine the city is as well-engineered and prepared as say San Francisco would be. I hope it doesn't turn into a Haiti-like situation of total destruction.

 

Just looking at the Google satellite image of the lat/lon for the epicenter, it looks like a fairly unpopulated area. Not sure how far its reach will go, but I'm hopeful at least it won't decimate a huge population center.

 

I was going to quibble over the geography references (epicenter is like 200 miles from MC), but apparently this thing shook the majority of the country. If you're 200 miles away from the epi and buildings are swaying, that's huge. Acapulco (115 miles) and Oaxaca (101) are much closer to the epicenter.

 

Unfortunately, the epicenter looks like it's smack dab in the middle of a small town, which I would think got leveled.

That said, it could have been a major disaster if it were actually in Mexico City. I'm wondering if Acapulco and Oaxaca are far enough away to avoid any major damage. Hopefully, it's like D.C. where some buildings got shook and cracked last year, but there wasn't extensive damage or injuries.

 

The city is basically built on jello (dried up lake bed) instead of dirt, so any earthquake there is an adventure.

 

I worked in an area that has a large Haitian immigrant population, so when that country got destroyed, it was huge news for us and the community we served.

When I saw "7.9 quake shakes Mexico City," I kind of assumed the worst.

 

This report says a 6.2 hit Indonesia.

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/more-news/strong-earthquakes-hit-mexico-indonesia/story-e6frf7lf-1226305789127

And I saw another one detailing a 3.8 in western Nevada.

 

My wife was in Mexico City during the earthquake in the 80s - - I thought it was 83 but that is not important. She said the hotel she was in was moving about as if it were dancing.

However, that quake was only about 5.9. If this one is 7.9, then this one is 100 times as strong as the one back in the 1980s. The Richter Scale is a logarithmic scale so a "6.9" is 10 times stronger than a "5.9" and a "7.9" is 10 times stronger than a "6.9".