Powerful quake slams Mexico
MEXICO CITY — A magnitude-7.2 earthquake shook south and central Mexico Friday, causing people to flee swaying buildings and office towers in the country’s capital, where residents remain jittery after a deadly quake five months ago.
Crowds gathered on Mexico City’s central Reforma Avenue as well as on streets in Oaxaca state’s capital, nearer the quake’s epicentre, which was in a rural area close to Mexico’s Pacific coast and the border with Guerrero state. There were no immediate reports of deaths.
“It was awful,” said Mercedes Rojas Huerta, 57, who was sitting on a bench outside her home in Mexico City’s trendy Condesa district, too frightened to go back inside.
She said she was still frightened, thinking of the Sept. 19 earthquake that caused 228 deaths in the capital and 141 more in nearby states.
The U.S. Geological Survey originally put the magnitude of Friday’s quake at 7.5 but later lowered it to 7.2. It said the epicentre was 53 kilometres northeast of Pinotepa in southern Oaxaca state. It had a depth of 24 kilometres.
Mexican Civil Protection chief Luis Felipe Puente tweeted that there were no immediate reports of damage from the quake.
There was no tsunami threat from the quake, according to the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center.