Scared families south of the Mexico-California border slept outside for a second night on Monday after a big earthquake tore cracks in roads and houses and dozens of aftershocks rattled the area.
Two people died and more than 200 were injured on Sunday when a magnitude 7.2 quake rocked the area around the border city of Mexicali. Baja California Governor Jose Osuna said the victims were crushed by a collapsed house and a falling wall.
The tremor, felt as far north as Los Angeles, cracked main roads, toppled electricity posts and knocked down an empty multistory parking lot under construction in Mexicali, a prosperous industrial city and busy border crossing.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Dozens of smaller tremors continued to shake buildings in Mexicali, adding to fears of another big quake. On top of those opting to sleep outdoors, Osuna said 3,500 people with badly damaged homes would be moved to shelters.
In the nearby town of Guadalupe Victoria, near the quake’s epicenter, officials passed out water, blankets and food to scores of people camping in tents or cars, too afraid to return home. One person dragged a mattress outside to sleep on.
“We’re panicking over the aftershocks,” said Juana Cabrera, who spent Sunday night on the street with 20 family members including a three-month-old baby and a 68-year-old grandmother after a wall in her house fell down.
Broken gas pipes sparked fires on Sunday — burning down a department store in the border town of San Luis Rio Colorado — and briefly darkened streets in Mexicali causing car accidents, but no major buildings collapsed.
Power was mostly re-established in Mexicali on Monday, but some hospitals lay patients out on beds in parking lots due to worries over cracked walls. Many stores, banks and restaurants stayed shut, with employees frightened to return to work.
“With the number of aftershocks we’ve had, the likelihood of another 6 or 7 magnitude earthquake is very real,” Erik Pounders, a geologist at the US Geological Survey, said. “There might be a few structures that just barely made it through and the second one could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.”
A highway connecting Mexicali with the nearby border city of Tijuana on the Pacific coast was ruptured by a crevice at least a meter deep, according to one witness.
A liquefied natural gas import terminal south of Tijuana was not damaged however, operator Sempra Energy said.
‘GREAT OPPRTUNITY’: The Paraguayan president made the remarks following Donald Trump’s tapping of several figures with deep Latin America expertise for his Cabinet Paraguay President Santiago Pena called US president-elect Donald Trump’s incoming foreign policy team a “dream come true” as his nation stands to become more relevant in the next US administration. “It’s a great opportunity for us to advance very, very fast in the bilateral agenda on trade, security, rule of law and make Paraguay a much closer ally” to the US, Pena said in an interview in Washington ahead of Trump’s inauguration today. “One of the biggest challenges for Paraguay was that image of an island surrounded by land, a country that was isolated and not many people know about it,”
‘DISCRIMINATION’: The US Office of Personnel Management ordered that public DEI-focused Web pages be taken down, while training and contracts were canceled US President Donald Trump’s administration on Tuesday moved to end affirmative action in federal contracting and directed that all federal diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) staff be put on paid leave and eventually be laid off. The moves follow an executive order Trump signed on his first day ordering a sweeping dismantling of the federal government’s diversity and inclusion programs. Trump has called the programs “discrimination” and called to restore “merit-based” hiring. The executive order on affirmative action revokes an order issued by former US president Lyndon Johnson, and curtails DEI programs by federal contractors and grant recipients. It is using one of the
‘FIGHT TO THE END’: Attacking a court is ‘unprecedented’ in South Korea and those involved would likely face jail time, a South Korean political pundit said Supporters of impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol yesterday stormed a Seoul court after a judge extended the impeached leader’s detention over his ill-fated attempt to impose martial law. Tens of thousands of people had gathered outside the Seoul Western District Court on Saturday in a show of support for Yoon, who became South Korea’s first sitting head of state to be arrested in a dawn raid last week. After the court extended his detention on Saturday, the president’s supporters smashed windows and doors as they rushed inside the building. Hundreds of police officers charged into the court, arresting dozens and denouncing an
One of Japan’s biggest pop stars and best-known TV hosts, Masahiro Nakai, yesterday announced his retirement over sexual misconduct allegations, reports said, in the latest scandal to rock Japan’s entertainment industry. Nakai’s announcement came after now-defunct boy band empire Johnny & Associates admitted in 2023 that its late founder, Johnny Kitagawa, for decades sexually assaulted teenage boys and young men. Nakai was a member of the now-disbanded SMAP — part of Johnny & Associates’s lucrative stable — that swept the charts in Japan and across Asia during the band’s nearly 30 years of fame. Reports emerged last month that Nakai, 52, who since
RSS