A magnitude 7.6 earthquake shook Mexico’s central Pacific coast on Monday, killing two persons and setting off a seismic alarm in the rattled capital on the anniversary of two earlier devastating quakes.
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. This one didn’t cause much damage, but was very powerful.
“This is a coincidence,” that this is the third Sept. 19 earthquake, said U.S. Geological Survey seismologist Paul Earle. “There’s no physical reason or statistical bias toward earthquakes in any given month in Mexico.”
Nor is there a season or month for big earthquakes anywhere on the globe, Earle said. But there is a predictable thing: People seek and sometimes find coincidences that look like patterns.
“We knew we’d get this question as soon as it happened,” Earle said. “Sometimes there are just coincidences.”
“It seems like a curse,” Isa Montes, a 34-year-old graphic designer in the city’s central Roma neighborhood, said of the quake’s timing as helicopters flew overhead, surveying the city.
The National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), one of the country’s most prestigious seats of higher learning, said there was no scientific explanation for three major quakes on the same day and attributed it to pure coincidence.
But others could not quite believe it.
“It’s this date. There’s something about the 19th,” said Ernesto Lanzetta, a business owner in the Cuauhtemoc borough of the city. “The 19th is a day to be feared.”
Monday’s quake was not related to or caused by the drill an hour or so earlier, nor was it connected to a damaging temblor in Taiwan the day before, Earle said.
Mexican authorities said the seismic alert had sounded nearly two minutes before the quake struck, giving residents time to evacuate.
Still, some people in the capital struggled to grasp it was a real quake as the government had already sounded the alarm earlier in the day as a practice exercise commemorating the past earthquakes on the same day.
Many Mexicans reacted to the latest quake by posting an array of memes online venting their anxiety and finding humor in the natural disaster. (Agencies)