Phenomenon caused scenes of confusion, but without ‘serious damage’, according to the first official reports
A 6.5 magnitude earthquake, with its epicenter in Guerrero, in the southwest of , hit this tourist area on the Pacific coast and neighboring Mexico City this Friday (2), causing scenes of confusion, but without “serious damage”, according to the first official reports. The earthquake occurred around 8:00 am (local time, 11:00 am in Brasília) and had a magnitude of 6.5, according to data from the National Seismological Service of Mexico. The strong tremor was preceded, a minute earlier, by alarms that, during the long holiday at the beginning of the year, woke up many Mexicans and tourists, some of whom took to the streets still in their pajamas.
It also forced the cancellation of the press conference that the president holds every morning at the National Palace in Mexico City. The earthquake had its epicenter 15 kilometers from San Marcos, near tourist Acapulco, in the state of Guerrero (south), Sheinbaum reported upon returning to the National Palace minutes after the tremor.
The president stated that, preliminarily, there are no reports of “serious damage”. The ground began to shake at 7:58 am local time (10:58 am in Brasília), prompting residents of the capital to evacuate their homes. “I was still sleeping when the street alarm started going off,” Karen Gómez, 47, who lives on the 13th floor of a building in the Álvaro Obregón neighborhood in Mexico City, told AFP.
“The cell phone alarm scared me a lot,” explained Gómez, a company employee, referring to a cell phone alert system recently implemented by the Mexican government in 2025. “The scare was horrible; I could feel the building shaking,” said Norma Ortega, 57, a resident of a nearby building.
AFP journalists found that doctors in white coats and nurses, as well as patients and their families, evacuated the Clínica Londres, located in the central neighborhood of Cuauhtémoc.
Other earthquakes
Part of Mexico City, particularly the central area, is built on the muddy subsoil of what was once a lake, making it particularly vulnerable to earthquakes. The most felt are those that originate on the coast of Guerrero, less than 400 km away. On September 19, 1985, an 8.1 magnitude earthquake devastated a large area of Mexico City. With its epicenter on the Pacific coast, between Guerrero and Michoacán, it also shook much of central and southern Mexico.
The 1985 earthquake left 12,843 people dead, according to a count of official death certificates published by the newspaper Excélsior in 2015. Civil organizations counted more than 20,000 dead at the time. For years, official estimates of the death toll have varied. Also on September 19, 2017, a 7.1 magnitude earthquake left 369 people dead, most in Mexico City.
With support from the National Seismological Service, warning systems have been developed, including smartphone apps, that warn of strong earthquakes and give residents of the capital up to a minute to stay safe.
The city government installed speakers on public lighting poles that broadcast the “seismic alert”.
Mexico is located between five tectonic plates, whose movements make the country one of the countries with the highest seismic activity in the world, particularly on the Pacific coast, from the border with Guatemala to the state of Jalisco (west).
*With information from AFP
