Photos: 7.1 magnitude earthquake kills more than 200 in Mexico

The earthquake was centered near the Puebla state town of Raboso, about 76 miles southeast of Mexico City</s>A magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck Mexico Thursday in the state of Puebla, which is about 80 miles southeast of Mexico City. This latest quake comes less than two weeks after an 8.1 earthquake hit the country, killing nearly 100 people.</s>MEXICO CITY (AP) — A magnitude 7.1 earthquake rocked central Mexico on Tuesday, collapsing some buildings, cracking the facades of others and scattering rubble on streets less than two weeks after another tremor killed at least 90 in the country’s south.

Mexican media broadcast images of several downed buildings in heavily populated parts of Mexico City and nearby Cuernavaca. A column of smoke rose from a structure in one central neighborhood in the capital. Dramatic video showed a mid-rise building collapsing into a cloud of dust. It was not clear whether there were people inside.

The quake caused buildings to sway sickeningly in Mexico City and sent panicked office workers streaming into the streets, but the full extent of the damage was not yet clear. There were no immediate reports of deaths.

The U.S. Geological Survey calculated its magnitude at 7.1 and said it was centered near the Puebla state town of Raboso, about 76 miles (123 kilometers) southeast of Mexico City.

Puebla Gov. Tony Gali tweeted that there had been damaged buildings in the city of Cholula including collapsed church steeples.

In Mexico City, thousands of people fled office buildings and hugged to calm each other along the central Reforma Avenue as alarms blared, and traffic stopped around the Angel of Independence monument.

Earlier in the day workplaces across the city held readiness drills on the anniversary of the 1985 quake, a magnitude 8.1 shake, which killed thousands of people and devastated large parts of Mexico City.

In the Roma neighborhood, which was hit hard by the 1985 quake, piles of stucco and brick fallen from building facades littered the streets. At least one large parking structure collapsed. Two men calmed a woman seated on a stool in the street, blood trickling form a small wound on her knee.

At a nearby market, a worker in a hardhat walked around the outside warning people not to smoke as a smell of gas filled the air.

Market stall vendor Edith Lopez, 25, said she was in a taxi a few blocks away when the quake struck. She said she saw glass bursting out of the windows of some buildings. She was anxiously trying to locate her children, whom she had left in the care of her disabled mother.

Pictures fell from office building walls, objects were shaken off of flat surfaces and computer monitors toppled over. Some people dove for cover under desks. Local media broadcast video of whitecap waves churning the city’s normally placid canals of Xochimilco as boats bobbed up and down.

Mexico City’s international airport suspended operations and was checking facilities for any damage.

Much of Mexico City is built on former lakebed, and the soil is known to amplify the effects of earthquakes even hundreds of miles away.

The magnitude 8.1 quake that hit Sept. 7 of Mexico’s southern coast was also felt strongly in the capital.

Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.</s>A Preliminary 7.1 Magnitude Earthquake shook Central Mexico at 1:14 Tuesday afternoon. The epicenter was near the community of San Juan Raboso, Mexico which is approximately 75 miles Southeast of Mexico City. The earthquake left buildings shaking and swaying in Mexico City. This earthquake comes on the the anniversary of a powerful 8.0 magnitude earthquake that hit Mexico City in 1985. The full extent of the damage is not available at this time.</s>A magnitude 7.1 earthquake rocked central Mexico on Tuesday, collapsing some buildings, cracking the facades of others and scattering rubble on streets less than two weeks after another tremor killed at least 90 in the country's south.

Mexican media broadcast images of several downed buildings in heavily populated parts of Mexico City and nearby Cuernavaca. A column of smoke rose from a structure in one central neighborhood in the capital. Dramatic video showed a mid-rise building collapsing into a cloud of dust. It was not clear whether there were people inside.

The quake caused buildings to sway sickeningly in Mexico City and sent panicked office workers streaming into the streets, but the full extent of the damage was not yet clear. There were no immediate reports of deaths.

The U.S. Geological Survey calculated its magnitude at 7.1 and said it was centered near the Puebla state town of Raboso, about 76 miles southeast of Mexico City.

Puebla Gov. Tony Gali tweeted that there had been damaged buildings in the city of Cholula including collapsed church steeples.

In Mexico City, thousands of people fled office buildings and hugged to calm each other along the central Reforma Avenue as alarms blared, and traffic stopped around the Angel of Independence monument.

Earlier in the day workplaces across the city held readiness drills on the anniversary of the 1985 quake, a magnitude 8.1 shake, which killed thousands of people and devastated large parts of Mexico City.

In the Roma neighborhood, which was hit hard by the 1985 quake, piles of stucco and brick fallen from building facades littered the streets. At least one large parking structure collapsed. Two men calmed a woman seated on a stool in the street, blood trickling form a small wound on her knee.

At a nearby market, a worker in a hardhat walked around the outside warning people not to smoke as a smell of gas filled the air.

Market stall vendor Edith Lopez, 25, said she was in a taxi a few blocks away when the quake struck. She said she saw glass bursting out of the windows of some buildings. She was anxiously trying to locate her children, whom she had left in the care of her disabled mother.

Pictures fell from office building walls, objects were shaken off of flat surfaces and computer monitors toppled over. Some people dove for cover under desks. Local media broadcast video of whitecap waves churning the city's normally placid canals of Xochimilco as boats bobbed up and down.

Mexico City's international airport suspended operations and was checking facilities for any damage.

Much of Mexico City is built on former lakebed, and the soil is known to amplify the effects of earthquakes even hundreds of miles away.

The magnitude 8.1 quake that hit Sept. 7 of Mexico's southern coast was also felt strongly in the capital.</s>(CNN) — A magnitude-7.1 earthquake struck the central Mexican state of Puebla on Tuesday afternoon, the US Geological Survey said.

Preliminary reports put the epicenter 2.8 miles (4.5 kilometers) east-northeast of San Juan Raboso and 34.1 miles (55 km) south-southwest of the city of Puebla, according to the USGS.

It was felt in the center of Mexico City, which is only about 75 miles (121 km) from the epicenter.

The earthquake struck at a depth of about 33 miles (51 km). There were no immediate reports of injuries.

The governor of Puebla said on Twitter that there were reports of damaged buildings. Tony Gali urged residents to follow civil protection security protocols.

Adrian Wilson, a photographer from New York City who was visiting his fiancee, was eating in the capital when the earthquake struck.

“I was having lunch when the floor gently rocked as if a big truck went by,” Wilson said. “It then amplified in waves and the whole room started shaking. The building is from the 1930s and just survived a big earthquake, so I knew I would be OK.”

Wilson told CNN: “It just seemed like a truck was going over a manhole cover and the building was slightly shaking. And it just magnified and magnified and the whole room was shaking.”

President Enrique Pena Nieto tweeted, “I have called a meeting for the National Emergency Committee to evaluate the situation and to coordinate any actions. Plan MX has been activated.”

The leader said he was “on (a) flight to Oaxaca. I immediately will return to Mexico City to address the situation caused by the earthquake.”

The earthquake comes 32 years after a magnitude-8.0 earthquake hit on September 19, 1985, killing an estimated 9,500 people in and around Mexico City.

It comes more one week after a magnitude-8.1 earthquake struck off the southern coast of the country, killing at least 61 people.

Developing story – more to come</s>PEDRO PARDO/AFP/Getty Images(MEXICO CITY) — A 7.1 magnitude hit central Mexico Tuesday afternoon on the 32nd anniversary of the biggest earthquake to ever strike the country’s capital.

According to the United States Geological Survey, the earthquake struck at about 2:14 p.m. ET near the town of Raboso in Puebla state.

Tremors from the quake could be felt in Mexico City, about 76 miles northwest of the epicenter.

Shortly after the earthquake hit, Mexico’s national coordinator of civil protection tweeted that there were no reports of damage yet but that response teams had been activated.

Earlier in the day, earthquake drills were held in Mexico City to mark the anniversary of the Michoacán earthquake of 1985, which caused widespread death and injuries as well as catastrophic damage in Mexico City.

While some accounts place the epicenter of the 1985 earthquake in the state of Michoacán, about 200 miles west of Mexico City and a region of tectonic tension between the North American Plate and the Cocos Plate, other place the epicenter off the coast in the Pacific Ocean.</s>Over 200 people hava died in an earthquake in Mexico.

A magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck Mexico on Tuesday, killing hundreds as buildings collapsed in plumes of dust.

Dozens of buildings tumbled into mounds of rubble or were severely damaged in densely populated parts of Mexico City and nearby states.

Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera said buildings fell at 44 places in the capital alone as high rises across the city swayed.

Hours after the earthquake, rescue workers were still clawing through the wreckage of a primary school that partly collapsed in the city's south looking for any children who might be trapped.

The earthquake is the deadliest in Mexico since a tremor in 1985 on the same date killed thousands.

The federal government declared a state of disaster in Mexico City, freeing up emergency funds.

Federal interior minister, Miguel Angel Osorio Chong, said authorities had reports of people possibly still being trapped in collapsed buildings. He said search efforts were slow because of the fragility of rubble.

"It has to be done very carefully," he said.

"Time is against us."</s>Mexico sits atop three of Earth's largest tectonic plates - the North American plate, the Cocos Plate, and the Pacific Plate.

Whenever these chunks of crust grind or butt up against one another, earthquakes happen. As a former lakebed, Mexico City is also home to soft soil that essentially acts as an amplifier for tremors, often making smaller earthquakes feel much larger.

On Tuesday, a deadly quake reverberated along the boundary between the Cocos and the North American plate as the southern-most plate slid beneath its northern neighbour.

The 7.1-magnitude temblor, which struck about 3 miles northeast of the city of Raboso, happened less than two weeks after the country was struck by an even more powerful 8.1-magnitude quake and 32 years to the day after a deadly magnitude 8.1 quake killed more than 9,500 people in Mexico City.

A map of the tectonic plate forces that subject Mexico to regular earthquakes. Credit: USGS

Mexico is one of the most seismically active countries in the world. Over the past century, the country has seen 19 earthquakes within 155 miles of the epicentre of today's earthquake, according to the US Geological Survey.

Earthquakes aren't the only local hazard, either - the region is also repeatedly subject to volcanic eruptions.

South of today's earthquake epicentre, two volcanoes - El Chichón and Volcán de Colima - erupted in 1982 and 2005, respectively.

Two other active volcanoes southeast of Mexico City called Popocatépetl and Ixtaccíhuatl occasionally vent visible gas, and the former erupted most recently in 2010.

Much of Mexico City is built on a former lakebed, where soft soil has been found to intensify the effects of earthquakes.

A paper published shortly after the area's 1985 earthquake found that the shaking had been amplified by as much as 500 percent in regions near the epicentre where the soil was the softest.

Since then, the city has taken some steps to manage the risk from future quakes - such as updating building codes near the capital and launching an earthquake early warning system - but many parts of the country still suffer from a lack of safe infrastructure.

This article was originally published by Business Insider.</s>Residents in the greater Los Angeles area were trying to reach loved ones in Mexico Tuesday evening after a deadly 7.1 magnitude earthquake struck the central region of the country hours earlier.

Kareen Wynter reports for the KTLA 5 News at 10 on September 19, 2017.

Anyone looking for loved ones in Mexico affected by the earthquake can call 1-52-5556-581111 to get in touch with representatives from the Consul General for assistance.
A magnitude 7.1 earthquake strikes Mexico, killing at least 220 people and collapsing several buildings in Mexico City and widespread evacuations, hours after a yearly earthquake drill in commemoration of the 1985 Mexico City earthquake.