This morning, the National Seismological Service reported two low-intensity earthquakes with epicenters located in Mexico City. The first, at 11:07 am, of magnitude 2.2 with the epicenter in Col. Del Valle, Mexico City; the second, at 11:20 in the morning, of magnitude 1.8 in the same area.
The only reports of people who felt the tremors were those in the neighborhoods surrounding the epicentral zone, where buildings in Colonia del Valle were evicted by the Civil Protection elements.
People left their buildings and said that they felt like an explosion at the time of the tremor; Due to its low intensity, no damage or injured persons are reported, for this reason, the seismic alert was not activated.
The seismicity in Mexico City is attributed to the existence of faults, also due to tensions in the accumulated surface for decades or centuries and, in some cases, to the overexploitation of aquifers, especially in delegations such as Tláhuac, Xochimilco, Iztapalapa, Cuauhtémoc and Gustavo A. Madero; the absence of water causes the subsoil to collapse and sink thus generating small movements of the ground (earthquakes).
According to the catalog of earthquakes of the SSN, 139 earthquakes have been registered with the epicenter in the Valley of Mexico since 1990, with a 4.0 being the one with the greatest magnitude on November 15, 2003, with an epicenter 5 km southeast of San Antonio Tecomitl, CDMX.
It is unlikely that earthquakes with magnitude greater than 4 will occur because the magnitude is limited by the size of the fractured area. However, due to the high population density and shallowness of the earthquakes, they can represent a risk for the inhabitants in Mexico City.
In some cases, the earthquake is preceded by a sound similar to that of an explosion, the moment when the fault that caused the earthquake is broken; In general, very low magnitude earthquakes are felt and heard only in the areas closest to the epicenter and are not even perceived in other areas within the city.
