Today’s temblor comes on the anniversary of the 1985 quake of 8.0:
“The 1985 Mexico City earthquake struck in the early morning of 19 September at 07:17:50 (CST) with a moment magnitude of 8.0 and a Mercalli intensity of IX (Violent). The event caused serious damage to the Greater Mexico City area and the deaths of at least 5,000 people.”
In a city of 8.8 million, to keep it in perspective. Today’s was only a 7.1, so maybe not so bad.
I spent that day in 1985 with a ham radio operator in Rollingwood, a suburb of Austin, listening to emergency calls and later writing a piece on what was learned. Communications were generally down then. Hard to say what it will be like now, with greater computer capacity and cell towers and wifi and generally a greater Internet. Ham radio should not be so necessary or useful.
