Ycuá Bolaños supermarket fire
The Ycuá Bolaños supermarket fire was a disastrous
fire that occurred on Sunday,
August 1, 2004 in
Asunción,
Paraguay. The three-story Ycuá Bolaños V
supermarket and commercial complex, which included a
restaurant, offices, and an underground parking garage, caught fire, causing two
explosions on the first floor. The fire burned for seven hours before firefighters were able to extinguish it. Initially, it was reported that at least 464 people died, including many children. The final death toll is 394 (leaving 204 orphans), including 9
disappeared and nearly 500 people injured. The cause was believed to be a faulty
barbecue chimney that leaked hot flammable gases into the ceiling, which ignited.
Several survivors of the fire and volunteer firefighters alleged that, when the fire broke out, doors within the complex were deliberately closed under the direction of the owners, Juan Pío Paiva and his son, Víctor Daniel, trapping people inside, in order to prevent people from fleeing with merchandise without paying for it. The management of the shopping center denied the charge. Paiva, his son and a security guard surrendered to the police and were formally charged.
A major issue was that the complex lacked
emergency exits and efficient
fire protection systems. The
architect of the complex and several
municipal public servants responsible for the overseeing of commercial buildings are being prosecuted as well.
On December 5, 2006, Juan Pío Paiva, Víctor Daniel Paiva and the security guard were convicted of involuntary
manslaughter with a maximum penalty of five years in prison. The prosecution however was seeking a 25-years-in-prison term. As the verdict was read, angry survivors and family members of the deceased started a violent demonstration inside the court room, which later spread onto the streets of Asunción. The prosecution demanded a
retrial.
On February 2, 2008, a new court ruled that the trio committed
negligent homicide. Juan Pío Paiva, president of the company, received a sentence of 12 years in prison. His son Víctor Daniel Paiva, present at the start of the fire, was sentenced to 10 years in jail. Security guard Daniel Areco, who closed the doors, was condemned to 5 years in prison. Additionally, shareholder Humberto Casaccia, also present at the start of the fire, was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison for endangering people in the work place.
September 11 attacks
The September 11 attacks (often referred to as September 11th or 9/11) were a series of coordinated
suicide attacks by
al-Qaeda upon the
United States on September 11, 2001. On that morning, 19 al-Qaeda
terrorists hijacked four commercial passenger
jet airliners. The hijackers intentionally crashed two of the airliners into the Twin Towers of the
World Trade Center in
New York City, killing everyone on board and many others working in the buildings. Both buildings collapsed within two hours, destroying nearby buildings and damaging others. The hijackers crashed a third airliner into the
Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C. The fourth plane crashed into a field near
Shanksville in rural Pennsylvania after some of its passengers and flight crew attempted to retake control of the plane, which the hijackers had redirected toward Washington, D.C. There were no survivors from any of the flights.
Nearly 3000 victims and the 19 hijackers died in the attacks. According to the New York State Health Department, 836 responders have died as of June 2009. Among the 2752 victims who died in the attacks on the World Trade Center were 343 firefighters and 60 police officers from New York City and the Port Authority. 184 people were killed in the attacks on the Pentagon. The overwhelming majority of casualties were civilians, including nationals of over 70 countries. In addition, there was at least one secondary death – one person was ruled by a medical examiner to have died from
lung disease due to exposure to dust from the World Trade Center's collapse.
The United States responded to the attacks by launching the
War on Terror: it invaded
Afghanistan to depose the
Taliban, who had harbored al-Qaeda terrorists. The United States also enacted the
USA PATRIOT Act. Many other countries also strengthened their anti-terrorism legislation and expanded law enforcement powers. Some American stock exchanges stayed closed for the rest of the week following the attack and posted enormous losses upon reopening, especially in the airline and insurance industries. The destruction of billions of dollars' worth of office space caused serious damage to the economy of
Lower Manhattan.
The damage to the Pentagon was cleared and repaired within a year, and the
Pentagon Memorial was built adjacent to the building. The rebuilding process has started on the
World Trade Center site. In 2006, a new office tower was completed on the site of
7 World Trade Center. The new
1 World Trade Center is currently under construction at the site and, at 1,776 ft (541 m) upon completion in 2013, it will become one of the
tallest buildings in North America. Three more towers were originally expected to be built between 2007 and 2012 on the site. Ground was broken for the
Flight 93 National Memorial on November 8, 2009, and the first phase of construction is expected to be ready for the 10th anniversary of the attacks on September 11, 2011
Rwandan Genocide
The Rwandan Genocide was the 1994 mass murder of an estimated 800,000 people. Over the course of approximately 100 days from the
assassination of
Juvénal Habyarimana on April 6 through mid-July, at least 800,000 people were killed, according to a Human Rights Watch estimate. Other estimates of the
death toll have ranged between 500,000 and 1,000,000 (a commonly quoted figure is 800,000) or as much as 20% of the country's total population.
In 1990, a rebel group composed mostly of
Tutsi refugees called the
Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) invaded northern Rwanda from
Uganda. The
Rwandan Civil War, fought between the Hutu regime, with support from
Francophone nations of Africa and France itself, and the RPF, with support from
Uganda, vastly increased the ethnic tensions in the country and led to the rise of
Hutu Power.
As an ideology, Hutu Power asserted that the Tutsi intended to enslave Hutus and must be resisted at all costs. Despite continuing ethnic strife, including the displacement of large numbers of Hutu in the north by the rebels and periodic localized extermination of Tutsi to the south, pressure on the government of
Juvénal Habyarimana resulted in a cease-fire in 1993 and the preliminary implementation of the
Arusha Accords.
The
assassination of Habyarimana in April 1994 was the proximate cause of the mass killings of Tutsis and pro-peace Hutus.[
citation needed] The mass killings were carried out primarily by two Hutu militias associated with political parties: the
Interahamwe and the
Impuzamugambi. The genocide was directed by a Hutu Power group known as the
Akazu. The mass killing also marked the end of the peace agreement meant to end the war, and the Tutsi RPF restarted their offensive, eventually defeating the army and seizing control of the country.
Munich Massacre
The worst tragedy in modern Olympic history
In 1972 the Olympics returned to
Germany for the first time since 1936. Back then,
Nazism was hitting its stride and
Adolf Hitler hoped to use the Games as a way to show off the "superiority" of his Aryan race on a world's stage.
Most Germans hoped the Munich Games in
1972 would at least in some way help to heal the racial wounds caused by Hitler. The world was still rife with political unrest. The
Vietnam War raged on, racial tensions in the United States persisted, and violence littered the
Middle East. German president
Gustav Heinemann welcomed the Olympics as "a milestone on the road to a new way of life with the aim of realizing peaceful coexistence among peoples."
Eight Arab Terrorists
On the morning of September 5, with six days left in the Games, the worst tragedy in Olympic history hit. Eight
Arab terrorists stormed into the Olympic village and raided the apartment building that housed the Israeli contingent. Two Israeli athletes were killed and nine more were seized as hostages. They demanded the release of over 200 Palestinians serving time in Israeli jails, along with two renowned German terrorists.
After a day of unsuccessful negotiations, the terrorists collected the hostages and headed for the military airport in
Munich for a flight back to the Middle East. At the airport, German sharpshooters opened fire, killing three of the Palestinians. A horrifying gun battle ensued, claiming the lives of all nine of the hostages, along with one policeman and two terrorists.
Controversial Decision
Athletic competition was suspended for 24 hours. During a day of mourning, a memorial service was held at the main stadium in front of 80,000 spectators. In a controversial decision, IOC president
Avery Brundage declared, "the Games must go on." And so they did, with the Olympic and national
flags flying at half-mast.
The most memorable footage from Munich should have been that of American swimmer
Mark Spitz winning his seventh gold medal or 17-year-old Soviet gymnast
Olga Korbut wowing the world on the balance beam. Instead, we're left with disturbing photos of terrorists in ski masks and of a policeman standing on the roof of the compound waiting to pounce with a semi-automatic weapon. And ultimately we're left with the video of ABC announcer Jim McKay uttering his fateful words, "They're all gone."
A new terrorism strikes Europe
Confusion as much as shock can magnify terrorism's destructive impact. When three Madrid commuter trains became killing fields on Thursday, the Spanish Government was quick to blame the Basque terrorist organisation, ETA. With national elections tomorrow and the Spanish Prime Minister, Jose Maria Aznar, proud of his success in weakening ETA, it was politically convenient to suggest ETA, desperate and dangerous, needed to be finished off. Too hastily, Spain persuaded the UN Security Council to condemn ETA. It soon backed off and accepted that responsibility for this atrocity, in which almost 200 have been killed and more than 1400 injured, could lie elsewhere.
Al-Qaeda, or an organisation affiliated with it, is the most likely culprit. A stolen van found near the originating point for three of the four bombed trains contained detonators and an audio tape with Koranic verses in Arabic. In a letter emailed to the Arabic newspaper Al-Quds al-Arabi in London, the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades, an obscure group claiming to be part of the al-Qaeda terrorist network, has claimed responsibility.
Some doubt whether the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades speak for al-Qaeda. The group also said it was responsible for the massive blackout last year in the north-east United States and parts of Canada which was officially found to have been caused by a power grid problem. The group has also claimed responsibility for the bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad, and attacks on synagogues in Istanbul, Turkey.
In a taped message released last October through the Arab satellite channel al-Jazeera, and widely considered authentic, Osama bin Laden warned that Spain would be among six nations targeted for their role in the Iraq war. ("We reserve the right to retaliate at the appropriate time and place against all countries involved, especially the UK, Spain, Australia, Poland, Japan and Italy.") Last year a Spanish chief magistrate issued a 700-page indictment against bin Laden and 34 others, including Muslim extremists living in Spain. Spanish investigators say Mohammed Atta, ringleader of the 19 hijackers in the September 11, 2001, attacks, made two trips to Spain in 2001, including one two months before the US attacks.
History, always prominent in the rhetoric of Islamic extremism, also makes Spain a special case. By AD711 the Iberian peninsula had been mostly conquered by Muslim armies. It was not completely abandoned by them until Catholic Spain drove out the last Islamic ruler from Granada in 1492. To bin Laden and his followers Spain represents part of the lost lands of the historic Muslim nation, which he vows to restore.
Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, also known as the Andes flight disaster, and in South America as Miracle in the Andes (El Milagro de los Andes) was a chartered flight carrying 45 people, including a rugby team and their friends and family and associates that
crashed in the
Andes on October 13, 1972. The last of the 16 survivors were rescued on December 23, 1972. More than a quarter of the passengers died in the crash, and several more quickly succumbed to cold and injury. Of the twenty-nine who were alive a few days after the accident, another eight were killed by an avalanche that swept over their shelter in the wreckage.
The survivors had little food and no source of heat in the harsh conditions, at over 3,600 metres (11,800 ft)
altitude. Faced with starvation and radio news reports that the search for them had been abandoned, the survivors fed on the dead passengers who had been preserved in the snow. Rescuers did not learn of the survivors until 72 days after the crash when passengers
Nando Parrado and
Roberto Canessa, after a 12-day trek across the Andes, found a
Chilean huaso, who gave them food and then alerted authorities about the existence of the other survivors.
On
Friday the 13th of October, 1972, a
Uruguayan Air Force twin
turboprop Fairchild FH-227D was flying over the Andes carrying
Old Christians Club rugby union team from
Montevideo, Uruguay, to play a match in
Santiago,
Chile.
The trip had begun the day before, when the Fairchild departed from
Carrasco International Airport, but inclement mountain weather forced an overnight stop in
Mendoza. At the Fairchild's
ceiling of 29,500 feet (9,000 m), the plane could not fly directly from Mendoza, over the Andes, to Santiago, in large part because of the weather. Instead, the pilots had to fly south from Mendoza parallel to the Andes, then turn west towards the mountains, fly through a low pass (Planchon), cross the mountains and emerge on the Chilean side of the Andes south of Curico before finally turning north and initiating descent to Santiago after passing Curico.
After resuming the flight on the afternoon of October 13, the plane was soon flying through the pass in the mountains. The pilot then notified air controllers in Santiago that he was over
Curicó, Chile, and was cleared to descend. This would prove to be a fatal error. Since the pass was covered by the clouds, the pilots had to rely on the usual time required to cross the pass (
dead reckoning). However, they failed to take into account strong headwinds that ultimately slowed the plane and increased the time required to complete the crossing: they were not as far west as they thought they were. As a result, the turn and descent were initiated too soon, before the plane had passed through the mountains, leading to a
controlled flight into terrain.
El Virilla train accidentThe El Virilla train accident occurred in
Costa Rica on March 14, 1926 when an overcrowded train carrying mostly farmers and labourers derailed whilst crossing a bridge across the Virilla River Canyon, killing 248 and injuring 93.
The train concerned was a Sunday excursion from
Alajuela and
Heredia to
Cartago where most intended to visit the statue of the
Le Negrita at the
Basílica de Nuestra Señora de Los Ángeles, which supposedly has great healing powers. The excursion was arranged to raise money for a home for the elderly by the noted Professor Francisco Gomez Alizago, tickets being enscribed "For the benefit of the elderly of Cartago". A six carriage train was arranged for the trip but proved grossly inadequate as the offer proved to be popular and was greatly over subscribed; no limit being placed on the sale of tickets with over a thousand being sold.
At 7 am, three carriages arrived at Alajuela and left 30 minutes later. Further stops were made and three more carriages were added at Heredia. Despite this many people were unable to board the train and it even missed out a later stop as it was too crowded to allow any more on. At 8:20 the train began to cross the bridge which lay on a left hand curve. A combination a poorly-fastened rail and the excessive weight of the train caused the last carriage to derail and pulled two further carriages from the track; one of which plunged 190 feet to the river below, killing 248 including Professor Alizago. The rescue work continued into the evening; several trains returning to Alajuela and Heredia with the bodies which were left at the stations for identification by friends and families. The government declared three days of national mourning; flags flew at half mast; cinemas, bars and other places of entertainment were closed.
1964 Alaska earthquake
The 1964 Alaska earthquake, known also as the Great Alaskan Earthquake, began at 5:36 P.M. AST on Friday, March 27, 1964. Across south-central Alaska, ground fissures, collapsing buildings, and
tsunamis directly caused about 131 deaths. This Alaskan
megathrust earthquake is known commonly as The Good Friday Earthquake because of the date of its occurrence.
Lasting nearly five minutes, it was the most powerful recorded
earthquake in
U.S. and
North American history, and the second most powerful ever measured by
seismograph. It had a magnitude of 9.2, at the time making it the second largest earthquake in the recorded history of the world.
The powerful earthquake produced
earthquake liquefaction in the region. Ground fissures and failures caused major structural damage in several communities, much damage to property and several landslides. Anchorage sustained great destruction or damage to many
inadequately engineered houses, buildings, and infrastructure (paved streets, sidewalks, water and sewer mains, electrical systems, and other man-made equipment). Two hundred miles southwest, some areas near Kodiak were permanently raised by 30 feet (9.1 m). East of Anchorage, areas around the head of Turnagain Arm near Portage dropped 8 feet (2.4 m), requiring reconstruction and fill to raise the Seward Highway above the new high tidemark. In Prince William Sound, a 27-foot (8.2 m)
tsunami destroyed the village of
Chenega, killing 23 of the 68 people who then lived there; survivors out-ran the wave, climbing to high ground. Post-quake tsunamis severely affected Valdez, Whittier, Seward, Kodiak, and other Alaskan Communities, as well as people and property in British Columbia, Oregon, and California. Tsunamis also caused damage in Hawaii and Japan.
At 5:36 p.m.
Alaska Standard Time (3:36 a.m. March 28, 1964
UTC), a
fault between the
Pacific and
North American plates ruptured near
College Fjord in Prince William Sound. The
epicenter of the earthquake was
61°03′N 147°29′W / 61.05°N 147.48°W / 61.05; -147.48, 12.4 mi (20 km) north of
Prince William Sound, 78 miles (125 km) east of
Anchorage and 40 miles (64 km) west of
Valdez. The focus occurred at a depth of approximately 15.5 mi (25 km). Ocean floor shifts created large
tsunamis (up to 70 feet (20 m) in height), which resulted in many of the deaths and much of the property damage. Large rockslides were also caused, resulting in great property damage.
Vertical displacement of up to 38 feet (11.5 m) occurred, affecting an area of 100,000 miles² (250,000 km²) within
Alaska.
Hurricane Katrina in New OrleansThe effects of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans were long-lasting. As the center of
Katrina passed east of
New Orleans on August 29, 2005, winds downtown were in the Category 3 range with frequent intense gusts and tidal surge. Hurricane force winds were experienced throughout the city, although the most severe portion of Katrina missed the city, hitting nearby
St. Bernard and
Plaquemines parishes.
Hurricane Katrina made its final landfall in eastern St. Tammany Parish. The western eye wall passed directly over St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana as a Category 3 hurricane at about 9:45 AM CST, August 29, 2005.
[1] The communities of
Slidell, Louisiana, Avery Estates, Lakeshore Estates, Oak Harbor, Eden Isles and Northshore Beach were inundated by the storm surge that extended over six miles inland. The storm surge impacted all 57 miles of St. Tammany Parish’s coastline, including Lacombe,
Mandeville and
Madisonville.
[2] The storm surge in the area of the Rigolets Pass is estimated 16 feet, not including wave action, declining to 7 feet at
Madisonville. The surge had a second peak in eastern St. Tammany as the westerly winds from the southern eye wall pushed the surge to the east, backing up at the bottleneck of the Rigolets Pass.
In the City of New Orleans, the storm surge caused more than 50 breaches in drainage canal levees and also in navigational canal levees and precipitated the worst engineering disaster in the history of the United States.
By August 31, 2005, 80% of New Orleans was flooded, with some parts under 15 feet (4.5 m) of water. The famous
French Quarter dodged the massive flooding experienced in other levee areas. Most of the city's levees designed and built by the
United States Army Corps of Engineers broke somewhere, including the
17th Street Canal levee, the
Industrial Canal levee, and the
London Avenue Canal floodwall. These breaches were responsible for most of the flooding, according to a June 2007 report by the
American Society of Civil Engineers. Oil refining was stopped in the area, increasing oil prices worldwide.
Ninety percent of the residents of southeast
Louisiana were evacuated in the most successful evacuation of a major urban area in the nation's history. Despite this, many remained (mainly the elderly and poor). The
Louisiana Superdome was used for those who remained in the city. The city flooded due to the failure of the federally built levee system. Many who remained in their homes had to swim for their lives, wade through deep water, or remain trapped in their attics or on their rooftops.
The disaster had major implications for a large segment of the
population,
economy, and
politics of the entire United States. It has prompted a Congressional review of the Corps of Engineers and the failure of portions of the
federally built flood protection system which experts agree should have protected the city's inhabitants from Katrina's surge. Katrina has also stimulated significant research in the academic community into urban planning, real estate finance, and economic issues in the wake of a natural disaster.
THE 22 APRIL 1991 COSTA RICA EARTHQUAKE
On April 22, 1991, a large earthquake (Mw = 7.7) occurred along the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica and western Panama. The rupture area of the fault mapped from the aftershocks is 45×85 km2;. The distribution of aftershocks and the local geological record suggest that faulting occurred on a blind thrust sheet that shallows toward the northeast. Uplift of the Caribbean coast ranging from 1.5 m near Puerto Limón and decreasing gradually toward the southeast was observed along the Caribbean. Northwest of Puerto Limón no significant coastal uplift was observed. This observation agrees with the aftershock data suggesting the rupture did not extend to the northwest of this location. The Limón earthquake also triggered aftershocks on secondary faults in the crust. These events are apparently associated with a family of imbricate thrust and strike-slip faults that lie in the eastern piedmont of the Talamanca Cordillera. The historical seismicity indicates that the Caribbean coast has been the site of several historical earthquakes with magnitudes greater than 7.0. On April 26, 1916, another earthquake (Ms = 6.9) took place in the same region. Summing the scalar seismic moment release along the Caribbean coast, the average rate of slip is approximately 0.8 cm/yr, compared with a value of 0.4 to 0.8 cm/yr along the Pacific subduction zone, depending on the estimated width of the seismogenic zone. Therefore a large fraction of the relative plate motion between the Cocos and Caribbean plates (9.8 cm/yr) appears to be taken up by crustal deformation in the back arc. The tectonic regime in the area appears to be dominated by the collision of the buoyant Cocos ridge with the subduction zone. The absence of a Wadati-Benioff zone where the Cocos ridge collides with the trench suggests the slab does not subduct beneath the Osa Peninsula; this is supported by the Pliocene gap of volcanism present in Costa Rica. Thus the predicted relative motion between the Cocos and Caribbean plates appears to be absorbed by a low rate of seismic moment release in the forearc and by a broad zone of active crustal shortening and underthrusting in the back arc. This type of tectonic deformation resembles more a collisional regime than a typical subduction zone environment.
An Icelandic volcano, dormant for 200 years, has erupted, ripping a 1km-long fissure in a field of ice.
The volcano near Eyjafjallajoekull glacier began to erupt just after midnight, sending lava a hundred metres high.
Icelandic airspace has been closed, flights diverted and roads closed. The eruption was about 120km (75 miles) east of the capital, Reykjavik.
About 500 people were moved from the area, a civil protection officer said.
"We estimate that no-one is in danger in the area, but we have started an evacuation plan and between 500 and 600 people are being evacuated," Sigurgeir Gudmundsson of the Icelandic civil protections department told the Agence France-Presse news agency.
The area is sparsely populated, but the knock-on effects from the eruption have been considerable.
A state of emergency is in force in southern Iceland and transport connections have been severely disrupted, including the main east-west road.
"Ash has already begun to fall in Fljotshlid and people in the surrounding area have reported seeing bright lights emanating from the glacier," RUV public radio said on its website.
"It was a bit scary, but still amazing to see," Katrin Moller Eiriksdottir, who lives in Fljotshlid, told the BBC News website.
"The ash had started falling and we couldn't leave the car."
Three Icelandair flights, bound for Reykjavik from the United States, were ordered to return to Boston, RUV radio reported.
Domestic flights were suspended indefinitely, but some international flights were scheduled to depart on Sunday.
There had initially been fears that the volcano could cause flooding, as it causes ice to melt on the glacier above it, but that scenario appears to have been avoided.
However, it could cause more activity nearby, scientists say.
"This was a rather small and peaceful eruption but we are concerned that it could trigger an eruption at the nearby Katla volcano, a vicious volcano that could cause both local and global damage," said Pall Einarsson, a geophysicist at the University of Iceland's Institute of Earth Science, Associated Press news agency reported.
As the eruption is taking place in an area that is relatively ice free, there is little chance of a destructive glacier burst like the one that washed away part of the east-west highway four years ago, after an eruption under the vast Vattnajoekull glacier.
1985 Mexico City earthquake
The 1985 Mexico City earthquake, a magnitude 8.1
earthquake that struck
Mexico on 19 September 1985 in the morning at 7:19 local time, caused the deaths of about 10,000 people and serious damage in the
nation's capital. The complete seismic event consisted of four quakes. A pre-event quake of magnitude 5.2 occurred on 28 May 1985. The main and most powerful shock occurred 19 September, followed by two aftershocks: one on 20 September 1985 of magnitude 7.5 and the fourth occurring seven months later on 30 April 1986 of magnitude 7.0. The quakes were located off the Mexican Pacific coast, more than 350 km away, but due to strength of the quake and the fact that Mexico City sits on an old lakebed, Mexico City suffered major damage. The event caused between three and four billion USD in damage as 412 buildings collapsed and another 3,124 were seriously damaged in the city. While the number is in dispute, the most-often cited number of deaths is about an estimated 10,000 people.
The earthquake occurred in the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of the Mexican state of
Michoacán, a distance of more than 350 km from the city, in the
Cocos Plate subduction zone, specifically in a section of the fault line known as the Michoacan
seismic gap at coordinates 18.190 N 102.533 W. The Cocos Plate pushes against and slides under the
North American Plate, primarily along the coasts of the states of Michoacán and
Guerrero in Mexico. Volatile trenches along the Cocos plate generally have had seismic events 30 to 70 years before 1985. This subduction zone outside the Gap was the source of 42 earthquakes of magnitude 7.0 or stronger in the 20th century prior to the 1985 event. However, this particular section of the subduction zone had not had an event for a much longer time. Shockwaves from the earthquake hit the mouth of the Río Balsas on the coast at 7:17 am and hit Mexico City, 350 km away, two minutes later at 7:19 am. The 19 September quake was a multiple event with two epicenters and the second movement occurring 26 seconds after the first. Because of multiple breaks in the fault line, the event was of long duration. Ground shaking lasted more than five minutes in places along the coast and parts of Mexico City shook for three minutes, with an average shaking time of 3–4 minutes. It is estimated the movement along the fault was about three meters. The main tremor was foreshadowed by a quake of magnitude 5.2 on 28 May 1985 (magnitude 5.2), and was followed by two significant aftershocks: one on 20 September 1985 of magnitude 7.5 lasting thirteen seconds and the third occurring seven months later on 30 April 1986 with magnitude 7.0 lasting ten seconds. However, at least twelve other minor aftershocks were associated with the seismic event.
The energy released during the main event was equivalent to approximately 1,114 Nuclear weapons exploding. The earthquake was felt over 825,000 square kilometers, as far away as Los Angeles and Houston in the United States.
