Quake Shakes Devastated Mexico City : Experts Say Temblor Was an Aftershock; Few Injuries Reported

A strong earthquake lasting about 25 seconds hit this already devastated capital at 9:02 a.m. today, and a U.S. expert said the tremor is considered an aftershock of Mexico City’s killer quake of Sept. 19.

The Red Cross dispatching desk said 10 people were treated for “nervous crisis” near a building that was badly damaged last month. The building was located at the intersection of Eduardo Molina and the Northern 1 Thoroughfare in the eastern part of the city.

Associated Press photographer Valente Cotera on the scene said the injuries clearly were the result of panic, such as bruises caused when people fell running. But little new damage to the building was visible.

The U.S. Geological Survey’s National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colo., said the quake had a magnitude of 5.5 on the Richter scale.

Waverly Person, a geophysicist at the center, said the temblor occurred “about in the same general area as the one . . . Sept. 19.”

That quake measured 8.1 on the Richter scale and killed an estimated 7,000 people in Mexico City. About 3,000 buildings collapsed or were severely damaged.

Not ‘Something New’

“This is actually an aftershock to the whole series of earthquakes that have occurred in that area,” Person said. “I don’t think it is the beginning of something new.”

The government news agency Notimex said Mexico’s National Seismological Laboratory recorded the quake as registering 5.7 on the Richter scale and gave the epicenter as 235 miles west of the capital in the Pacific off Michoacan state.

A quake registering 5.0 is considered capable of causing considerable damage.

Lamps swayed and ceiling tiles fell in some already damaged buildings, and clouds of dust rose from the ruins of last month’s quake. In many previously damaged buildings, debris tumbled down.

The Red Cross dispatching desk reported no other problems immediately.

Geological Survey spokesman Don Finley in Washington, who gave the epicenter as about 250 miles south of Mexico City, also said that today’s quake is considered an aftershock of the Sept. 19 temblor.

A second quake Sept. 20 measured 7.5 on the Richter scale.

Dozens of Tremors

Since then, dozens of lesser tremors hit the capital without causing damage.

At the huge General Hospital, reopening some of its services after damage last month, doctors and nurses could be seen comforting frightened patients. But no new damage was visible.

Guadalupe Espinosa, a newspaper vendor at a street corner on the major Paseo de la Reforma boulevard, said some people left their buildings after the quake.

Jorge Castillo Medina, an auxiliary policemen at a government building badly damaged in the September quakes, said he was inside when the tremor occurred. “I was afraid,” he said, but added that there was no new damage.