The 1911 Guerrero earthquake occurred on December 16 at near the coast of Guerrero,

Mexico Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...

along the Mexican subduction zone. The earthquake's energy was calculated using several different magnitude scales with an estimated moment magnitude of 7.6 and a

surface wave magnitude The surface wave magnitude (M_s) scale is one of the magnitude scales used in seismology to describe the size of an earthquake. It is based on measurements of Rayleigh surface waves that travel along the uppermost layers of the Earth. This ma ...

of 7.8. Following the event, telegraphy reports came in from a broad area of Mexico. Cities from

Guadalajara Guadalajara ( , ) is a metropolis in western Mexico and the capital of the list of states of Mexico, state of Jalisco. According to the 2020 census, the city has a population of 1,385,629 people, making it the 7th largest city by population in Me ...

, Mérida (on the Yucatán Peninsula), and Tapachula (near Guatemala) all reported the tremors. The earthquake lasted over two minutes and resulted in the deaths of 28 people.

Tectonic setting

In the region, the Cocos,

North American North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Ca ...

, and

Caribbean Plate The Caribbean Plate is a mostly oceanic tectonic plate underlying Central America and the Caribbean Sea off the north coast of South America. Roughly 3.2 million square kilometers (1.2 million square miles) in area, the Caribbean Plate borders ...

s converge and create a

tectonic Tectonics (; ) are the processes that control the structure and properties of the Earth's crust and its evolution through time. These include the processes of mountain building, the growth and behavior of the strong, old cores of continents k ...

zone of consistent and long term seismicity. Guerrero is located where the Cocos plate is being subducted under the North American plate, and the rupture area of the earthquake may have occurred in the Guerrero seismic gap, which is a stretch along the

Middle America Trench The Middle America Trench is a major subduction zone, an oceanic trench in the eastern Pacific Ocean off the southwestern coast of Middle America, stretching from central Mexico to Costa Rica. The trench is 1,700 miles (2,750 km) long an ...

that had not experienced movement nearly as often as nearby segments of the subduction zone. The convergence rate of the Cocos and North American plates in the Guerrero seismic gap varies between annually. This level of precision was made possible after the installation of permanent GPS monitoring stations, the first of which was installed in 1997 at Cayaco, Guerrero. The gap was defined as having a northwest section and a southeast section. The most recent significant events in the southeast sector were the 1907 and 1957 Guerrero earthquakes with respective magnitudes of 7.9 and 7.8. The 2007 report stated that the northwestern zone has not experienced a significant release of energy since the December 1911 event.

Damage

There were reports of walls and fences being damaged and part of a market's roofing frame falling and causing injury. The electricity had been cut for a time in

Mexico City Mexico City ( es, link=no, Ciudad de México, ; abbr.: CDMX; Nahuatl: ''Altepetl Mexico'') is the capital and largest city of Mexico, and the most populous city in North America. One of the world's alpha cities, it is located in the Valley o ...

. The greatest damage may have occurred in Chilpancingo, the capital city of Guerrero. According to the ''El Paso Herald'' issued on December 18, people in Mexico City rushed to the Zócalo running aimlessly or praying during the earthquake. Then Mexican president

Francisco I. Madero Francisco Ignacio Madero González (; 30 October 1873 – 22 February 1913) was a Mexican businessman, revolutionary, writer and Public figure, statesman, who became the 37th president of Mexico from 1911 until he was deposed in Ten Tragic Da ...

, conferring with some of his cabinet members at the moment, was standing in front of a window in the National Palace, watching the scene, laughing without fear, and remained there until the earthquake stopped.

References

External links

* {{Earthquakes in Mexico Earthquakes in Mexico Guerrero 1911 in Mexico December 1911 events 1911 disasters in Mexico

Tectonic setting

Damage

See also

References

External links