MEXICALI – Families huddled in parks and car parks in the northern Mexican border city of Mexicali yesterday after aftershocks from a big earthquake led them to sleep out in debris-strewn streets.
Two people died and about 100 were injured when a 7.2 magnitude quake rocked the Mexico-California border area on Sunday afternoon, Baja California governor José Osuna told the Televisa television network. One person was crushed in a collapsed house, the other hit by a falling wall.
The tremor, felt as far north as Los Angeles, cracked main roads, toppled electricity pylons and knocked down an empty multistorey car park under construction in Mexicali, a prosperous city and busy border crossing.
Hundreds of people camped out overnight as smaller tremors shook buildings with cracked floors, walls and broken windows.
“I wasn’t going to put my family at risk. Lots of homes have cracks,” said Fermin García, a teacher who slept with her family in a tent pitched between two shopping centers.
Broken gas pipes sparked a number of fires on Sunday, and darkened streets in Mexicali led to car accidents, but no major buildings appeared to have collapsed.
Power was slowly being re-established yesterday, but many state-run hospitals lacked power and patients were laid out on beds in parking lots due to worries over cracked walls.
A highway connecting Mexicali with the nearby border city of Tijuana on the Pacific coast was ruptured by a crack at least a meter deep.
Holidaymakers returning from Easter holidays were stuck in traffic jams and motorists reported difficulty finding fuel.
Sunday’s quake rattled nerves in the United States and across tremor-prone Latin America, which has been shaken by devastating earthquakes in Haiti and Chile this year. The relatively shallow quake was centred in a lightly populated area 48km (30 miles) to the southeast of the city.
Some neighbourhoods of San Diego reported minor structural damage and burst water pipes. In Los Angeles people felt buildings swaying.
Southern California, with its myriad geological faults, is prone to frequent quakes and citizens fear the advent of “the big one”.
The last to cause major damage was the 6.7 magnitude Northridge quake in 1994, which left 57 dead and 9,000 injured. – (Reuters)