7.2 Quake Hits Mexico, Causing Panic in Capital

A powerful earthquake killed at least one person, injured dozens and damaged hundreds of homes in southern Mexico on Thursday after it hit 190 miles southeast of the Mexican capital--where it caused panic but little damage nearly 10 years to the day after a massive quake ravaged the city.

Officials in the three towns closest to the epicenter in the mountainous state of Guerrero reported extensive damage to the region’s homes, most of them one-story adobe structures. In the town of Ometepec, which lies closest to the epicenter, an official said one man was killed when he was crushed under a wall of his home.

Radio stations in Mexico City reported two dead in Guerrero, and the government-owned news agency Notimex reported four deaths in the region. Those reports could not be confirmed.

Scientists at the National Autonomous University of Mexico’s seismology center here measured the quake at 7.3; U.S. seismologists in Golden, Colo., recorded it at 7.2. But scientists in both places agreed that the quake’s intensity--at least 10 times less than the 8.1 tremor of 1985--its depth and the sparse population at the epicenter accounted for the relatively minor damage.

“It was amazing--very strong but only localized damage,” said Arturo Roman, a lawyer with the Human Rights Center of the Mountains near the epicenter, speaking by telephone as aftershocks continued in his region. “But there was panic everywhere. I would say there wasn’t a single person in the whole town who was calm.”

Officials near the epicenter estimated damage in their area in the millions of dollars.

In the nation’s capital, where a sophisticated alarm system gave many of the 20 million residents nearly a minute’s warning of the quake, the temblor shattered windows, crumbled plaster, felled power lines and left people traumatized. Electricity and telephone service were cut for much of the day in several large neighborhoods, and the Mexican Red Cross said it treated 650 people for shock.

But hospitals, the Red Cross and city officials reported only isolated, minor injuries and no major damage in the rolling quake--which brought the city to a terrified standstill for about a minute. Scientists reported more than 19 aftershocks throughout the day, but few were felt in the capital.

Officials in villages and towns closer to the epicenter said Thursday’s quake was the worst of several they have felt since 1985, when a similar “vertical thrust” quake centered in Guerrero ravaged the countryside and killed thousands in Mexico City.

“I was bouncing around so much I couldn’t even get dressed,” said Ometepec Deputy Mayor Carlos Pina Arzate. At a local primary school that evacuated its pupils into an outdoor basketball court, he added, “the vibrations lifted the students two inches off the ground.”

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Pina estimated that the quake damaged 80% of the homes of the area’s 78,000 residents but leveled only two. In harder-hit Igualapa, a nearby town of 7,000, officials reported scores of homes razed. And in San Luis Acatlan, officials said most of the town’s 30,000 residents suffered damage.

But in the seaside resort of Acapulco, about 95 miles due west of the epicenter, officials reported only minor damage and no deaths or serious injuries.

In Mexico City, where at least 10,000 people were killed and hundreds of buildings were demolished a decade ago Tuesday, the most profound impact was psychological.

Crowds of teary-eyed office workers appeared outside downtown office buildings almost instantly after the quake hit, as emergency evacuation plans were implemented. Long lines formed at public telephones where, on phones that have been free since the last earthquake disabled their charging mechanisms, weeping clerks, bankers, businessmen and secretaries called loved ones to report they were unharmed.

Emergency police patrols, ambulances and fire departments mobilized within minutes. Rescue helicopters filled the air, and the radio stations connected to an early-warning alarm system installed in 1993 instantly began reporting conditions throughout the capital and nearby regions.

Radio station managers said the system appeared to work in the majority of the 54 stations linked to the network. The web of seismic detectors along Guerrero’s Pacific coast triggered a signal during radio broadcasts in Mexico City 50 seconds before the quake reached the capital.

“Happily, there are no grave consequences” in the capital, Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo announced while on a visit to the northern state of Nuevo Leon on Thursday. “Obviously there was tension among the people; there were areas of the city where the people are particularly affected by the tremors.”

Even the government’s harshest critics said they were impressed with the earthquake preparedness of the city’s residents during what--in the capital, at least--amounted to little more than a drill.

As the morning shock wore off, the quake also revealed the resiliency of the city’s people. Within an hour, the capital returned to normal--with its usual snarled traffic, bustling markets and smoke-belching buses careening through the streets.

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In analyzing Thursday’s quake, seismologists here and in the United States quickly concluded that it was not the “Big One” that so many in Mexico have been fearing since 1985.

David Novelo, director of the National Autonomous University of Mexico’s Geophysics Institute, said the quake’s magnitude officially registered 7.3, which he said means it was 10 times less powerful than the 1985 temblor. Novelo attributed the institute’s early reports that Thursday’s quake was 6.0 magnitude to substandard detection equipment, which he said the government is trying to replace with a more sophisticated system.

The depth of the earthquake, which American scientists put at seven miles beneath the earth’s surface, was a major factor in limiting the deaths and destruction to the area around the epicenter, about 250 miles southeast of that of the larger earthquake of Sept. 19, 1985.

Times staff writer Kenneth Reich in Los Angeles and researcher Shasta Darlington of the Mexico City Bureau contributed to this report.

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10 Times Weaker Than ’85 Quake

The quake that struck Mexico shortly after 8 a.m. local time measured magnitude 7.2 and was centered about 95 miles east of Acapulco near the town of Ometepec in Guerrero state. The National Earthquake Information Center at Golden, Colo., initially put the depth at seven miles. Thursday’s quake was about 250 miles down the Pacific coast from the 1985 earthquake, and it was almost one-tenth as powerful. The 1985 quake measured an official 8.1 and was centered near the town of Lazaro Cardenas.

Times staff writer Kenneth Reich in Los Angeles and researcher Shasta Darlington of The Times’ Mexico City Bureau contributed to this report.