Qualla: 2017 Puebla Earthquake

2017 Puebla Earthquake: Introduction

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Two hours before the ground began to shake, millions of Mexicans had practiced what to do when it did. September 19 is the anniversary of the 1985 Mexico City earthquake, which killed around 10,000 people, and every year the nation holds a commemorative drill. In 2017, the drill ran at 11 a.m. local time. At 1:14 p.m., the real thing arrived — a magnitude 7.1 earthquake centered about 55 kilometers south of the city of Puebla. The shaking lasted roughly 20 seconds. In that time, more than 40 buildings collapsed across the states of Puebla, Morelos, and the greater Mexico City area. Three hundred and seventy people lost their lives, including 228 in Mexico City alone.

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2017 Puebla Earthquake: A Country That Knows How to Shake

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Mexico sits atop several intersecting tectonic plates. Along the Pacific coast, the Cocos plate dives beneath the North American plate in a subduction zone that has generated some of the hemisphere's most powerful earthquakes. Mexico City's particular vulnerability is geological:...

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2017 Puebla Earthquake: When the Alarm Came Too Late

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Mexico operates one of the world's most sophisticated seismic early warning systems, SASMEX, which detects earthquakes near the coast and transmits alerts to Mexico City before the shaking arrives. On September 19, the system failed to provide advance warning. The epicenter was t...

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2017 Puebla Earthquake: Neighbors in the Rubble

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Within hours, thousands of volunteers flooded into collapsed neighborhoods. Images from Colonia Roma, Colonia Obrera, and Colonia del Valle showed ordinary citizens forming human chains to clear debris with their bare hands. Rescue teams worked through the night at the Colegio En...

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2017 Puebla Earthquake: Six Thousand Complaints, No Answers

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

An investigation published in October 2017 revealed that since 2012, more than 6,000 complaints about construction violations had been filed in Mexico City, with no public record of follow-up. Many of the buildings named in those complaints collapsed on September 19. The Urban De...

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2017 Puebla Earthquake: The Long Rebuilding

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In Jojutla, Morelos, near the epicenter, 652 homes were destroyed and 1,157 damaged, along with schools and the Palacio Municipal. Two years later, in January 2020, residents were still waiting for reconstruction to begin. By January 2021, more than three years after the quake, M...

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