• DAMAGES: The southern state of Oaxaca (pop. 3.9 million) is reporting extended damage from a strong 7.5 earthquake that shook Mexico Tuesday including five dead, an unknown number of injured, significant cracks in hospitals and some roads hit by landslides.
• EPICENTER: Centered near the Pacific resort of Huatulco, the earthquake caused the death of at least 4 people in the towns of Santa María Huatulco, San Juan Ozolotepec, San Francisco Ozolotepec and San Agustín Amatengo. A worker of Mexico’s state-owned oil company also perished in Salina Cruz.
• HOSPITALS: “We have problems in two hospitals”, Alejandro Murat, Oaxaca’s state governor, told Mexican radio. The governor said that one of the damaged hospitals in the coastal town of Santa María Huatulco had been assigned to serve coronavirus patients in the region.
• DETAILS: According to Mexican authorities, the earthquake was felt as far as 500 miles north of the epicenter in Oaxaca’s Pacific coast. Experts at Mexico’s Seismological Centre (SSN) was a result of the Cocos tectonic plate forcing down under the North American tectonic plate.
