In Mexico, Resuming Life After Quake
The day after one of the strongest earthquakes to strike the region in nearly two decades, residents on both sides of the border marveled that damage was relatively light even as waves of mild aftershocks troubled nerves.
The United States Geological Survey reported that the 7.2 quake, the strongest in Southern California in two decades, was caused by two rock masses grinding and scraping together along a roughly 45-mile zone. It was felt as far away as southern Utah and Portland, Ore.
Paul Caruso, a geophysicist with the survey’s National Earthquake Information Center, said that the quake was very similar to the one that ravaged Haiti on Jan. 12, and that he was shocked it did not cause more death and destruction. “The thing that saved people’s lives was that the epicenter was in a remote part of Mexico,” he said. “In Haiti, it was right in Port-au-Prince.”
A visitor to this city, which seemed to sustain the most damage in the area, might be surprised to hear that such a strong quake had rumbled through the day before, causing only two deaths and scores of mostly minor injuries and damaging several buildings.
Its forces were fickle, leaving blocks of untouched buildings, then a crumpled facade, broken glass and cracks climbing a wall.
“With the way things shook I wonder why the whole city didn’t come down,” said Laura Durantes, 49, as she sat on a lawn outside a shelter for people who could not or did not want to return home. “Our house has a big crack in the floor, but we were lucky it is still there.”
There were reports of several dozen homes and businesses severely damaged or destroyed on the outskirts of the city and in rural areas to the south.
The two people who died were a 94-year-old man struck by a falling wall in his home, and a homeless man who was killed when the house he was squatting in caught fire, Baja California state officials said.
Some 60 miles to the east, two major stores burned in San Luis Rio Colorado, Sonora.
The main border crossing into neighboring Calexico, Calif., where broken glass and plaster littered sidewalks downtown, was closed to vehicles as United States officials assessed damage to the federal building there. But people could walk through an inspection area, and many did.
Here, several large stores remained closed, as did government offices, and by midday about a quarter of the city was still without power. But the daily rhythms of life were re-emerging, with buses full, traffic steady, restaurants re-opening and people hustling to appointments.
Still, some residents preferred to remain outdoors — a balmy day helped matters — near their houses or, in the case of Alma Delia Soto, 35, and her three young children, at one of a few shelters the government set up.
“Here is the only place we feel safe,” said Ms. Soto, cutting up fruit on a blanket as her sons kicked a soccer ball at a recreation center serving as a shelter. “We spent the night in the car all squeezed in, outside the house, but the car shook and shook with those aftershocks. We don’t trust the walls of our house, so we will stay here.”
Mexican seismologists said the city was spared heavy damage probably because a large number of buildings were built recently — it is an important agricultural and manufacturing hub with a relatively large middle class — and the energy of the quake moved away from it, to the northwest. The most arresting image here was the partial collapse of a parking deck under construction next to the civic plaza, about half of it pancaked.
Across the street, the main public hospital remained largely off limits after suffering big cracks, although state officials called the damage largely cosmetic and said that the hospital had evacuated some patients and moved others to the lobby, transformed into a kind of makeshift clinic.
Mexico’s president, Felipe Calderón, toured some of the damage on Monday afternoon, including the closed public hospital.
On the other side of the border, damage was mainly confined to cracked walls and floors and burst water lines in various sections of San Diego. “We were very fortunate,” said Maurice Luque, a San Diego Fire-Rescue spokesman. “We fared very well — not a single significant injury, not a single destroyed building or home.”
