Major earthquake strikes Mexico for 3rd time on same date since 1985, this time a magnitude 7.6; 1 dead

Doyle Rice, USA TODAY
·2 min read
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A 7.6 magnitude earthquake shook Mexico's west coast on Sept. 19, 2022. Earthquakes also occurred in Mexico on Sept. 19 in 2017 and 1985.
A 7.6 magnitude earthquake shook Mexico's west coast on Sept. 19, 2022. Earthquakes also occurred in Mexico on Sept. 19 in 2017 and 1985.

A 7.6 magnitude earthquake shook the west coast of Mexico on Monday, coincidentally on the same date that two previous major quakes had rattled the country years before.

Originally pegged at 7.5 magnitude, there were no immediate reports of major damage or fatalities 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 at a mall collapsed, 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, Weather.com reported. Potential threats to Hawaii are still being evaluated, the Warning Center said.

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.

Michoacan’s Public Security department said there were no immediate reports of significant damage in that state beyond some cracks in buildings in the town of Coalcoman.

Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum also tweeted that there were no reports of damage in the capital.

The quake hit on the same day as major quakes that struck Mexico in 1985 and 2017. Alarms for Monday's new quake came less than an hour after quake alarms sounded in a nationwide earthquake simulation to mark the prior previous quakes.

Deadliest earthquakes: Magnitude-7.1 quake in Mexico City one of most dangerous of the past decade

“This is a coincidence,” that this is the third Sept. 19 earthquake, said U.S. Geological Survey seismologist Paul Earle. “There’s no physical reason or statistical bias toward earthquakes in any given month in Mexico.”

As many as 10,000 people were killed in the 1985 temblor, a magnitude 8.0 that struck near Mexico City. The 2017 quake, a magnitude 7.1, killed about 370 people and caused heavy damage in the Mexican states of Puebla and Morelos.

Contributing: The Associated Press/The Associated Press contributed to this article.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Mexico earthquake, magnitude 7.6, rattles country's Pacific coast