Acapulco residents still edgy after powerful earthquake
Acapulco, Mexico, Sep 8 (EFE).- The residents of the Mexican coastal resort city of Acapulco woke on Wednesday still nervous after the magnitude-7.1 earthquake that hit southern and central Mexico the night before, killing at least one person and causing minor material damage.
During the night, the city felt as many as 210 aftershocks following the Tuesday evening quake, the epicenter of which was located 11 kilometers (7 miles) from Acapulco and was felt in several Mexican states.
“I was alone and I was on the ground floor of my house and everything started moving. And when I tried to go outside I felt the whole impact, which came up through the stones. The truth is that I didn’t understand what had happened. I saw that the wall was on top of my car,” Ana Maria Arieta told EFE on Wednesday.
The quake struck about 9 pm, and Arieta saw that it had totaled two of her three vehicles.
Several tourists from Mexico City got out of their car when the temblor struck, just moments before the vehicle was crushed by debris from a damaged hotel.
“It was a big scare, but we want to come back (to Acapulco). The Sept. 19, 2017, earthquake affected us and was much worse. We already have our bags ready to leave,” they said, referring to the temblor that killed a number of people and heavily damaged the national capital.
So far, authorities in the southern state of Guerrero have registered one death resulting from the quake along with assorted material damage to buildings, walls and roadways, as well as to the facades of homes, businesses and hospitals, mainly in Acapulco and Chilpancingo.
After the quake, local authorities set up four shelters in sports venues for people who wanted to take refuge outside their homes for fear that they might collapse.
A number of hotels also posted messages on the social networks inviting people to spend the morning in their common areas.
Severe damage was registered to adobe houses in the town of Jose Joaquin de Herrera in the region known as Montaña de Guerrero.
“We’ll be sleeping for as long as necessary outside the house. If we have to sleep in the car … all week, we’ll do it, because we don’t know how things were where we live,” Laura Ramos, who preferred to spend the night on a soccer field in the open air rather than in her fifth-floor apartment, told EFE.
Despite the fact that earthquakes are almost considered to be a daily occurrence in the state of Guerrero, many local residents agreed that they had never before felt a quake of this magnitude.
This quake reminded locals of the 8.2-magnitude temblor that struck exactly four years ago with its epicenter in the Gulf of Tehuantepec and which mainly affected the states of Oaxaca and Chiapas, killing 98 people, 78 of them in Oaxaca, 16 in Chiapas and four in Tabasco.
EFE
