Has the president* made any comment about this? Offered aid? Thoughts and prayers?..
I thought so.
The main problem is that so many areas in Mexico city in in other nearby cities have lax building codes so the buildings aren’t built to withstand earthquakes at all. Many of these areas are residential with a lot of apartment buildings. These buildings literally pancake in any quake greater the 5 if it’s really close. The epicenter of this quake was nearly 100 km from Mexico City yet still destroyed buildings there.
Cities closer to the epicenter like Puebla probably got hit much harder. I suspect the death toll will grow to be much, much larger over the next several days.
HELL no…the nimrod we call the President of the US does not have one ounce of class…and his supporters will insist it’s because when he’s insulted he hits back! DJT wouldn’t know how to be a leader if it was a pack of rats following him thru the streets of Hamlin.
@sysprog “DJT wouldn’t know how to be a leader if it was a pack of rats following him thru the streets of Hamlin.”
Love it! The rats know a fraud when they smell one, and would stick to their holes.
The biggest problems with Mexico City earthquake is two-fold:
First, a 7.1 magnitude quake is fairly massive. More consequentially, however, is that Mexico City is built on an ancient lake bed, a prehistoric caldera. The result is that in any seismic event the area shakes like a bowl of jello.
Although many buildings may have been constructed with lax specifications, static structures are simply going to fail because of the extreme violence of the shaking regardless of their design.
And to make it all the more devastating, with 22 million-plus people Mexico City is the largest, most densely populated urban area in North America.
Modern buildings can be designed to withstand far more seismic activity than what hit Mexico City yesterday. I suspect that the majority of buildings that collapsed were residential apartments and that the official buildings used by the government and the large corporations withstood this earthquake just fine. The main problem is an uneven enforcement of building codes, not the earthquake itself.
Definitely a major factor. Another consideration is they don’t require retro-fitting there, likely due to the cost. And then you get into the enforcement thing again.
Still, the place is built on Jell-O.