Volunteers and rescuers work on a collapsed building after an earthquake in Mexico City, capital of Mexico, on Sept. 20, 2017. [Photo/Xinhua] |
The Sept. 19 earthquake in central Mexico has clearly been a huge blow to the country and its people. The death toll is nearing 300, and the number of injured is significantly higher. Dozens of buildings have collapsed, while many others are so damaged that they've been deemed unfit for habitation.
The amount of time and money that it will take for things to return to normal is anyone's guess. But these are all things that can be learned from a brief perusal of the headlines -- with a little digging, one can also find stories and facts that provide a deeper understanding of what happened and of the disaster's broader context. The number of these is legion, so, to keep things simple, below are listed just a few.
The other states and cities affected
Most of the international news has been focused on the earthquake's impact in Mexico City, but only about half of the associated deaths actually occurred there. The most recent total death toll is 273, 137 of which were in the country's capital. In the states of Morelos and Puebla, on the border of the earthquake's epicenter, there were 73 and 43 deaths, respectively. There were also 13 deaths in the State of Mexico (just outside of Mexico City), six in the state of Guerrero and one in the state of Oaxaca, which had been heavily affected by another earthquake less than two weeks earlier.
Two major earthquakes just two weeks apart
As mentioned above, on Sept. 7, Mexico suffered another heavy earthquake. It mostly affected the southern states of Oaxaca and Chiapas, but it was also felt in many of the areas that sustained damage on Sept. 19. At 96, the number of dead was lower, but it was still a relatively disastrous earthquake compared to previous ones in Mexico's recent past -- in fact, it had been the highest death toll caused by an earthquake in Mexico since 1985 before being eclipsed on Sept. 19.
Also of note is that if you combine the death tolls from the Sept. 7 earthquake and the Sept. 19 earthquake -- a time span of just 13 days -- the total is greater than all earthquake-related deaths in Mexico since 1985, a fact which highlights just how unusual the proximity of the two events truly are.
Comparisons to 1985
The 1985 earthquake in Mexico was truly horrible -- the exact number of dead has never been agreed upon, but it numbers in the thousands, with tens of thousands of people injured. The Sept. 19 earthquake has drawn many comparisons to 1985, with some people who lived through both saying that the intensity was equally bad in both, adding that the reason there was less damage this time around is because most of buildings prone to earthquake damage had already been destroyed in 1985. In any case, people are hoping that it will be at least another 32 years before anything similar happens again.
The bizarre story of Frida Sofia
One of the most talked about tragedies in the aftermath of the earthquake was the story of the collapse of the Enrique Rebsamen school. Children had been caught beneath the building's rubble, and a concerted rescue effort was quickly underway. The name of one student in particular, Frida Sofia, caught the public's attention.
Various details about her emerged in the media: that rescue workers had been in contact with her or picked up signs of her on sound and heat detecting devices, and that they were inching their way towards her through the collapsed school. But people soon began to notice irregularities in the story of Frida Sofia, perhaps most notably that no one from the school, neither students nor staff, had ever heard of a girl with that name. Afterwards, the whole story was revealed to be hoax. Why and how exactly the rumors were perpetuated isn't yet clear, but many members of the public are outraged by the false narrative they'd been fed.
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