1985 Mexico Earthquake

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The 1985 mexico city earthquake.
On the date of 1985 at around 7:19 mexico city was hit by an earthquake that had a magnitude of about 8.1. The earthquake did not occur on the city but it occurred 350 kilometres from the city on the Cocos plate subduction zone. Mexico city built on a former lakebed made it very vulnerable to natural disasters and being on top of the Cocos tectonic plate didn’t help either. The earthquake was caused by the north american plate and the Cocos plate. The earthquake caused mini tsunamis that caused little to no damage to mexico.

How much damage did the earthquake cause?
The Impact of the earthquake the casualties were 5000-45000 people injured or killed. The earthquake produced mini tsunamis that although not too big still damaged the mexico. The earthquake affected many secondary and tertiary hospitals; Thirteen hospitals were partially destroyed or completely destroyed. The event caused about 3 to 4 billion US dollars of damaged. 137 schools collapsed and 1687 school buildings were damaged because of the earthquake. Also the number of jobs lost due to the earthquake was about 200,000. An estimate of about 250,000 people lost their homes due to the earthquake. The earthquake made many homeless. At the time of the earthquake mexico had strict building codes learning from past earthquakes in …show more content…

The geological cause of the earthquake although the earthquake didn’t happen in mexico city it occurred in the pacific ocean off the coast of the mexican state of Michoacan in the Cocos subduction zone in the section of the Michoacan seismic gap. Mexico is located on top of one of earth’s subduction zones. The Cocos plate pushed against the north american plate forcing the Cocos plate to slide under the north american plate into the mantle. Which caused a lot of seismic energy which was caused the eruption. The earthquake was caused by the Cocos plate sliding under the north american

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