An earthquake measuring 8.1 on the Richter scale struck Mexico on the morning of Sept. 19, devastating much of the central area of Mexico City and causing thousands of deaths and injuries across an area of 310,000 square miles, encompassing the capital and the states of Guerrero, Morelos, Colima, Michoacan and Jalisco.
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The epicentre was located 65 km off the Pacific coast to the north of Acapulco and some 320 km west of Mexico City. It was the strongest earthquake to hit Mexico this century and the first of its magnitude anywhere in the world since that affecting the Santa Cruz islands in the South Pacific on July 17, 1980. (The initial measurement of the earthquake was 7.8 on the Richter scale-- -but this was subsequently revised upwards by the US National Earthquake Information Service.)
President de la Madrid immediately declared a state of emergency and deployed 10,000 troops to prevent looting. Hopes of rescuing survivors suffered an early setback when a second tremor struck on the evening of Sept. 20, some 36 hours after the first one, and destroyed another 30 buildings. The number of people who died was officially put at 7,000 with several thousand still missing, but independent observers believed that the toll could be as high as 20,000.
Fifty thousand rescue workers were mobilized and achieved some success in freeing survivors from the ruins, most notably at two large hospitals, the Benito Juarez and the Centro Medico, where 43 newborn babies were brought out from the debris of the maternity wings.
An appeal for international aid brought immediate responses from Latin America, the United States, Canada and Europe, and the United Nations Disaster Relief Organization announced on Sept. 23 that an international appeal was being set up to acquire hospital equipment to help treat an estimated 15,000 injured. A further 30,000 were believed to have been made homeless. The National Association of Transformation Industries (CANACINTRA) estimated that the economic damages would total at least $5,000 million and called for the writing off of one year's interest payments on the nation's foreign debt.
Criticism of the government came from rescue workers complaining about the lack of a coherent contingency plan to cope with such disasters.
Observers raised doubts about the safety of many of the buildings which had been prone to the tremors. On Sept. 27 residents from the heavily damaged areas of Tlatelolco and Tepito began demonstrations in Mexico City in protest against the government's slowness in getting aid to the thousands of homeless. On the next day, President de la Madrid presided over a Cabinet meeting to draw up a reconstruction programme for the capital and to decide how to attend to the needs of the estimated 300,000 affected. Concern was focused on the threat of an epidemic of typhoid or tetanus due to the rapid decomposition of bodies still trapped in the ruins, and the damages caused to sewerage and water supply facilities.
By Sept. 30 the government had ordered the demolition teams to begin clearing the ruins of over 400 buildings, despite some reluctance among rescue workers to abandon any remaining hopes of finding surviors.
Elsewhere in the country the earthquakes did not strike with the same force, although up to 150 people died and 1,500 were injured in Jalisco, while in Michoacan 30 died and 150 were injured when hotels collapsed at the beach resort of Playa Azul. The industrial town of Lazaro Cardenas (Guerrero) was extensively damaged but the resorts of Acapulco and Zihuatanejo emerged unscathed.
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