Mexico City M7.1 earthquake

[Dan Robinson]

Significant earthquake near Mexico City. USGS site has an hypocentral depth of 51km, but the strong ground motion in the city suggests the rupture propagated close to/toward the surface. Some notable videos:

Collapsing buildings:
https://twitter.com/amecora1/status/910253324104011777
https://twitter.com/robottkid/status/910234795631882241

Swaying buildings:
https://twitter.com/Holbornlolz/status/910223143243001863
https://twitter.com/BreakingNNow/status/910220884824207360

Canal seiche:
https://twitter.com/BreakingNLive/status/910219436606574592

Building interior:
https://twitter.com/JorgeFavaloro/status/910251523254444034

Live stream with sound (use the seek bar to find the quake by watching for rising dust on the left hand side of the frame)

 

[Ben Holcomb]

The video coming out of Mexico City and the photos are absolutely heartbreaking. I visited last summer and had a great time. Great city and great people. I stood in the Paseo de la Reforma in your video up there, Dan.

The Mexico equivalent of the Red Cross is at https://www.cruzrojamexicana.org.mx/ although to give money you will have to speak spanish or use translate.google.com.

 

[Dan Robinson]

I was impressed by the earthquake warning system they have in place. It seems to work very well and likely saved a lot of lives in this case. It is similar to the one in place in Japan. If the network of stations detect shaking, they immediately calculate the time of s-wave arrival and sound the alarm. The sirens going off can be heard in some of the videos 15 seconds before the strong shaking starts. It doesn't sound like much time, but it is enough for someone to quickly move to a safe place (under a desk/stairwell, outside in the open etc).

 

[Ben Holcomb]

The earthquake warning systems absolutely saved lots of lives, and gave us some video as a side effect. I read somewhere yesterday that they've been working on that in California. A lifesaver there if true.

 

[Mark Blue]

Our cleaning lady still has family there, on the NW side of the city. I’ll have to ask her if her mom is okay tomorrow and what kind of damage she sustained to her home if any.

EDIT: After talking to my cleaning lady (Silvia) just now I learned that her nephew and his girlfriend were trapped in a collapsed building. They were able to pull him out yesterday around 3 pm, but his girlfriend didn’t survive. I know this isn’t scientific information per Dan’s first post. It’s more along the lines of the human side of these natural tragedies and how it can hit close to home even though it’s a long way from here. It appears her mom is okay but essential services are out of commission due to the circumstances.