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Deadly Earthquake Rattles Southern Mexico

The earthquake along the coast of the southern state of Oaxaca, Mexico, on Tuesday caused several deaths and damaged property.
Luis Alberto Cruz Hernandez
/
AP
The earthquake along the coast of the southern state of Oaxaca, Mexico, on Tuesday caused several deaths and damaged property.

A powerful earthquake struck Mexico's southern Oaxaca region on Tuesday, killing at least five people and shaking buildings hundreds of miles away.

The 7.4-magnitude quake struck mid-morning, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Its epicenter was off the Pacific coast about seven miles southwest of Santa María Zapotitlán, near the beach resort of Huatulco.

Reuters reports that rockfalls blocked the mountain roads in the region, cutting off isolated villages.

The state-run oil company Pemex said one of its workers fell from a refinery structure to his death, and the quake caused a fire at its facility in the city of Salina Cruz.

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said147 aftershocks had been reported by noon.

The quake was felt in several states and triggered seismic alarms in Mexico City, sending residents there onto the streets.

This is not the first large earthquake to jolt the area in recent years. In September 2017, an 8.1 magnitude quake struck off the southern coast, killing at least 60 people. The U.S. Geological Survey said that Tuesday's earthquake was "near the northern end of the aftershock distribution" of the 2017 event.

NPR's Carrie Kahn contributed to this report.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Corrected: June 23, 2020 at 11:00 PM CDT
An earlier version of this story misspelled the beach resort of Huatulco as Huatuco.
Rachel Treisman (she/her) is a writer and editor for the Morning Edition live blog, which she helped launch in early 2021.
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