A magnitude 7.6 earthquake shook Mexico’s central Pacific coast on Monday, killing at least one person and setting off a seismic alarm in the rattled capital on the anniversary of two earlier devastating quakes.
There were at least some early reports of damage to buildings from the quake, which hit at 1:05 p.m. local time, according to the U.S. Geologic Survey, which had initially put the magnitude at 7.5.
It said the quake was centered 37 kilometers (23 miles) southeast of Aquila near the boundary of Colima and Michoacan states and at a depth of 15.1 kilometers (9.4 miles).
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said via Twitter that the secretary of the navy told him one person was killed in the port city of Manzanillo, Colima when a wall at a mall collapsed.
In Coalcoman, Michoacan, near the quake’s epicenter, buildings were damaged, but there were not immediate reports of injuries.
Mexico’s National Civil Defense agency said that based on historic data of tsunamis in Mexico, variations of as much as 32 inches (82 cm) were possible in coastal water levels near the epicenter. The U.S. Tsunami Warning Center said that hazardous tsunami waves were possible for coasts within 186 miles (300 kilometers) of the epicenter.
Irlanda Villa, of coastal Coahuayana, Michoacan near the border with Colima, said some walls had fallen, but the big fear was that a tsunami would follow.
Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum tweeted that there were no reports of damage in the capital
Alarms for the new quake came less than an hour after a quake alarms warbled in a nationwide earthquake simulation marking major quakes that struck on the same date in 1985 and 2017. The magnitude 8.0 quake centered near the coast of Guerrero state in 1985 killed at least 9,500 people. More than 360 people died in the magnitude 7.1 quake that struck in 2017.
