https://www.livescience.com/30791-deadly-1985-mexico-city-earthquake.html [4] Prior to the event, estimates about ground movement on the lakebed were generally accepted and a number of buildings were built on these estimates. [19] as 6,500 metres (4.0 mi) of primary and secondary water and drainage pipes suffered breaks in 163 places, cutting off water and contaminating it. [5], While not on or near any fault line like San Francisco or Los Angeles, Mexico City is vulnerable to earthquakes. Literally this building was split in two, the part that overlooked Humboldt Street stood and the part that overlooked Iturbide Street collapsed falling floor to floor and pulling the building towards that street. Photo Mehmet Celebi, USGS, A lake bed in a basin, however, is one of the worst grounds for constructing a building. A small tsunami caused only mild damage to Lázaro Cárdenas and Zihuatanejo. These consisted of families from the "Multifamiliar Juárez" housing project, which completely collapsed and the combined colonias (neighborhoods) of Centro, Morelos, Guerrero, Doctores, Obrera, Peralvillo, Asturias, Nicolás Bravo among others which housed the working and lower classes. However, the codes were not designed for seismic activity of the intensity experienced in 1985. Finally Carrillo Arena was fired from SEDUE and replaced by Manuel Camacho Solís. They were located off the coast along the Middle America Trench, more than 350 kilometres (220 mi) away, but the city suffered major damage due to its large magnitude and the ancient lake bed that Mexico City sits on. [4], Shockwaves from the earthquake hit the mouth of the Río Balsas on the coast at 7:17 am and hit Mexico City, 350 km (220 mi) away, two minutes later at 7:19 am. President de la Madrid made relatively few public appearances afterwards and during those he did, he received strong heckling, in contrast to the near-reverence that past presidents enjoyed at such events. One interesting characteristic was that many buildings had their upper floors collapse, leaving the lower floors relatively undamaged. The main tremor was foreshadowed by a quake of magnitude 5.2 on 28 May 1985, and was followed by two significant aftershocks: one on 20 September 1985 of magnitude 7.5 lasting thirteen seconds and the third occurring seven months later on 30 April 1986 with magnitude 7.0 lasting ten seconds. One nine-story building, for example, overturned. [9][10], The earthquake occurred in the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of the Mexican state of Michoacán, a distance of more than 350 km (220 mi) from the city, in the Cocos Plate subduction zone, specifically in a section of the fault line known as the Michoacán seismic gap. [4] In many damaged buildings, just one floor had collapsed. Considerable damage and injuries were reported in other parts of the Umbria region. [11][19], However, the death toll was great enough to require the use of the IMSS baseball field as a morgue, using ice to conserve bodies for identification. [4][15], In the port of Lázaro Cárdenas, near the epicenter, the 19 September event registered as IX on the Modified Mercalli intensity scale; in parts of Mexico City, it registered the same, even at a distance of about 400 km (249 mi) away. The event caused between three and four billion USD in damage as 412 buildings collapsed and another 3,124 were seriously damaged in the city. Mexico City residents re-lived a nightmare after a 7.1-magnitude earthquake killed hundreds and caused widespread destruction on Tuesday, the same day that a huge tremor in 1985 killed thousands. The deal generally worked; movements like CUD moderated their stances and agencies like SEDUE and PRHP made progress in rebuilding housing, regardless of political affiliation. [29] The falling debris also killed street vendors who worked just outside the studio building. Over 720,000 tons of debris was removed during the first six weeks after the event. Its reputation was damaged further when the government seemed to be deliberately downplaying the number of earthquake victims. Rockslides were reported along highways near Ixtapa, Guerrero, with sand volcanos and ground cracks in Lazaro Cardenas. In 1325 the Aztecs, one of the high civilisations of Mesoamerica, founded their capital Tenochtitlan. 1985 Mexico City earthquake was a Geography and places good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. The number of people with potable water went from six million to 90,000. Every 19 September, in all public buildings at Mexico City and all the nation the civil protection authorities conduct evacuation drills to evaluate the evacuation response in the case of an earthquake. Coastal and most inland damage was moderated by the fact that most of the west of Mexico sits on bedrock, which serves to transmit the shockwaves without amplifying them. The three largest and most effective organizations were based in Tlatelolco and Colonia Roma. [19], One of the most visible government institutions to fall in the event was the tower of Hospital Juárez, one of the oldest hospital institutions in Mexico. After the shaking stopped, they both left the Televisa studios through a back door, and hours later they were back on the air in the studios of Canal de las Estrellas to broadcast live what was happening. [12] Consequently, most of the populace believes that the true numbers have never been revealed. Rescue workers soon arrived to start digging through the rubble. Many of these patients were very ill. 1,900 patients were successfully moved from here, without any deaths, in just four hours. These "topos" have developed into highly trained specialists in times of disaster, with branches in other parts of Mexico. People at the scene stated that there was simply no time to run and escape the building's fall. Landslides caused damage at Atenquique, Jalisco, and near Jala, Nayarit. It had 102 buildings with seven medical facilities, twenty-two schools and about 500 small businesses, serving the 80,000 people who lived there. Two reasons are the resonance in the lakebed sediments and the long duration of the shaking. The next seriously affected area was Venustiano Carranza where 83 buildings collapsed, 128 partially collapsed and 2,000 structures were seriously damaged. [5] This translates to more than 30,000 housing units completely destroyed and another 68,000 units damaged. Five people were reported killed, many were injured, and extensive damage occurred in the vicinity of Norcia. [5] The Museo Mural Diego Rivera on the north side of the park houses a mural by Diego Rivera which was originally housed in the huge Hotel Del Prado across the street. [33] Twelve buildings in the complex were so badly damaged that they were demolished in the next six months. Some types of foundations, particularly those involving piles driven into clay and held in place by friction, turned out to be weak. (1) Tremendous damage in Mexico City at 400 km distance from the epicenter, was triggered by the amplifications of the ground motions through the soft lacustrine clay deposit which is surrounded by hard volcanic rock formations. [4], Off the coasts of Michoacán and Guerrero, the 19 and 20 September events caused a rupture in the seabed 240 km long and 70 km wide, located between the subduction trench and the coastline. ↵ One of the more famous images of the event was the live broadcast of Hoy Mismo, a news program in the Televisa television network, when the earthquake struck. Students at the Universidad de las Américas in nearby Puebla reported feeling as if the cafeteria had been lifted and rocked back and forth, shattering windows and injuring some people but mostly causing panic. Eighty percent of the earthquake damage was confined to four of them: Venustiano Carranza, Cuauhtémoc, Benito Juárez and Gustavo A. It was also surrounded by a number of other buildings belonging to the hospital complex such as a blood bank, teaching facilities, offices as well as the original convent. Much of the community organizing focused on helping those left homeless by the earthquake. Many of the older colonial buildings have survived hundreds of years on the lakebed simply because they are not tall enough to be affected by the resonance effect. [citation needed], At the time of the earthquake, Mexico was in its fourth year of a foreign debt crisis, and a contracting economy causing serious political problems for the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). Ecuador reported the highest waves of 60 cm (2.0 ft). Above this is a layer of sand and above this is a layer of sand and rock. Nearly all the buildings that collapsed were located in this lake zone that extended from Tlatelolco in the north to Viaducto Miguel Alemán in the south, Chapultepec Park in the west and to a short distance east of the Zócalo or main plaza. 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