Preparedness Saved Lives During Earthquake Peter Noyce and Shigeru Ishiguro-Algeciras - Infosurhoy
go to original March 22, 2012

Workers clear debris from a collapsed bridge that fell on a bus in Mexico City on March 20. Authorities reported no deaths and just 11 injured as the result of the 7.8-magnitude earthquake, which lasted about 55 seconds. (Violeta Schmid/Reuters)

MEXICO CITY – Liliana Camarillo, an office worker in the central neighborhood of Polanco, in Mexico City, remembers exactly what happened at precisely 12:02 p.m. local time on March 20.

“I was sitting at my desk and suddenly the building began to shake,” Camarillo, 31, said. “I ran to check on everybody, but everybody was already on the streets. I have never seen so many people. But the street cables kept moving. When we went out, the earthquake was still going on. People were scared, seeing from the street how everything shook.”

Stories like hers repeated throughout Mexico City, when years of earthquake preparedness paid off as multitudes rapidly evacuated the city’s many high rises, schools, hospitals and government dependencies during a 7.8-magnitude earthquake that lasted about 55 seconds.

Earthquake drills have been frequent in the city since 1985, when it was hit by a massive 8.1-magnitude quake that left 10,000 dead and significant structural damage. This time no deaths were reported nationwide, but Mexican Interior Minister Alejandro Poiré confirmed nine injured in Oaxaca and two in Mexico City.

“Civil society deserves an honorific mention, because we have reports from all over the city that despite the panic, everybody evacuated perfectly and went to the meeting points, so nothing bad happened,” Miguel Elías Moreno, the head of the National Civil Protection agency for the capital area, said during a press conference the evening of March 20.

Schools were evacuated without incident throughout the city.

“I was working at school and at first I didn’t realize what was happening, but then the children started shouting that there was a tremor,” said Lucy Manders, 25, a teacher at a primary school in the south-central district of Del Valle. “Suddenly the alarms sounded and everyone fled onto the playground. The children were shouting a bit, but everything was orderly and well organized – everyone knew what to do.”

In Chiapas, thousands of lives were saved as a statewide earthquake drill coincidentally was under way when the real tremor hit.

During the drill, scheduled several months ago, the government evacuated 256 public buildings, 19,000 schools containing 1.7 million children, as well as 350 factories and 1,200 medical facilities, according to the government of Chiapas.

The tremor had its epicenter 25 kilometers (15 miles) east of the town of Omatepec in the southern state of Guerrero near the Pacific Coast, according to the U.S Geological Survey. The earthquake was felt in the southern states of Mexico, Guerrero, Chiapas, Tlaxcala, Tabasco, Oaxaca, Veracruz, Jalisco and Michoacán and some areas of northern Guatemala.

At least 18 aftershocks, including one with a magnitude of 5.3, were recorded throughout the afternoon and evening in the affected areas, according to Mexico’s National Seismologic Service.

In the aftermath of the quake, phone lines and power were out in Mexico City’s northern area for a few hours, but utilities were re-established to the majority of residents by the evening, according to the Mayor’s Office.

Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard said in an afternoon press conference that “strategic systems, such as health, transportation and communications around Mexico City had reported no problems, and there are no reports of significant damage to buildings.”

One of the lines of the Mexico City metro suffered minor damage on its tracks, Ebrard said, but it’s already being repaired. The Benito Juárez International Airport suspended operations after the quake but was operating normally an hour later.

Outside the capital, several states suffered significant structural damage. In Guerrero, Gov. Ángel Aguirre told state radio that about 1,600 houses in four municipalities of the coastal region had been damaged.

In a statement, the government of Oaxaca reported damage to 61 houses throughout the state.

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