About 200 buildings were damaged in the Mexico earthquake that killed two people

    Photo:reuters

MEXICO CITY:  A massive earthquake that killed two people in Mexico on Monday damaged more than 200 buildings and injured 10 people, Laura Velazquez, head of Mexico's civil protection agency, said on Tuesday.

A magnitude 7.6 earthquake hit western Mexico in the states of Colima and Michoacán, coincidentally on the same day that two previous major quakes had rattled the country years before.

There were no immediate reports of major damage from the quake, which hit at 1:05 p.m. local time, the U.S. Geological Survey said. One person was killed in the port city of Manzanillo, Colima, when a wall collapsed at a mall, according to President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

The U.S. Tsunami Warning Center said a tsunami was possible along parts of the Mexican coastline within about 200 miles of the quake epicenter, but there was no threat for the U.S. West Coast including California and Hawaii, Weather.com reported.

The USGS said the quake was centered 23 miles southeast of Aquila near the boundary of the Colima and Michoacan states and at a depth of 9.4 miles.

Beyond a few cracks in some buildings in the town of Coalcoman, Michoacan's Public Security department stated that there were no immediate reports of serious damage in that state.

Some walls had fallen, according to Irlanda Villa of coastal Coahuayana, close to the Colima border, but the main worry was that a tsunami would follow. "We were concerned the sea might disappear, but everything turned out great in the end."

Claudia Sheinbaum, the mayor of Mexico City, also tweeted that there had been no reports of damage in the city.

It occurred on the same day as significant earthquakes in 1985 and 2017. Less than an hour had passed since the earlier earthquakes were marked by a nationwide earthquake simulation when the sirens for Monday's quake began to sound.

    Photo:Fernando Liano AP

The fact that this is the third earthquake on September 19 is really a coincidence, according to seismologist Paul Earle of the U.S. Geological Survey. "Neither a physical cause nor a statistical bias favour earthquakes in Mexico in any particular month."

A magnitude 8.0 earthquake that occurred in 1985 close to Mexico City claimed up to 10,000 lives. The 2017 earthquake, which had a magnitude of 7.1, devastated the Mexican states of Morelos and Puebla and killed about 370 people.