A major earthquake struck Mexico on Tuesday, unleashing panic as it damaged hundreds of buildings and caused homes in the capital to bounce like “trampolines.”
Office workers fled into the street when the magnitude 7.4 quake shook Mexico City for more than a minute. Cellphone lines went down, buildings were evacuated, traffic snarled and the stock exchange had to suspend trading early.
At least 11 people were injured, but no deaths were reported, the Mexican Interior Ministry said.
The quake hit hardest in the southwestern state of Guerrero, where about 800 houses were damaged, officials said. The Guerrero Governor Angel Aguirre said he had reports of homes being knocked down, though state authorities could not confirm this.
All Taiwanese expatriates in Mexico were reported to be safe, the Taiwanese representative office in Mexico City said.
The Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Mexico said in a statement that it had contacted Taiwanese trade associations in cities located near the epicenter of the quake that hit at 12:08pm.
Citing a spokesperson for Taiwanese associations in Acapulco, which is located in Guerrero, the statement said that although the earthquake caused serious tremors, none of the Taiwanese expatriates living in the city and its vicinity were affected or in danger.
The statement said that only a few Taiwanese businesses were slightly damaged in other areas affected by the earthquake.
The tremor was one of the strongest to hit the country since a devastating magnitude 8.1 earthquake of 1985, which killed thousands in Mexico City.
The Interior Ministry said the country would remain on high alert for the next 24 hours after 18 aftershocks to the quake were registered, some above magnitude 5.0.
While no deaths were reported on Tuesday, the quake scared many residents and temporarily cut off electricity to 2.5 million users in the capital.
Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard said some rails of the subway system moved as a result of the tremor, while leaks at three aqueducts feeding the eastern portion of the capital would leave hundreds of thousands of homes with no water for at least a day.
Martha Suarez, an Argentine living in Mexico City’s Roma neighborhood said she had never known anything like it.
“My TV set fell over, the building felt like it was on a trampoline. This one was like no other I have felt before,” Suarez said, holding her little dog close.
Scores of the houses damaged were in Ometepec, a town close to the epicenter of the quake in Guerrero.
In neighboring Oaxaca, 68 mud-brick houses were damaged and at least five people were injured, one of them seriously, in the area around the town of Pinotepa Nacional near the Pacific Ocean coastline, local emergency services said.
The quake was felt as far away as Guatemala City.
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