The quake struck off the coast, but the capital sits on an old lake bed that shook like jelly. A city three hundred and fifty kilometres from the epicentre was the one that fell.
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DownloadThe 1985 Mexico City earthquake struck on September 19, 1985, registering magnitude 8.0 (moment magnitude, Mw). Each whole step on the moment-magnitude scale is roughly 32 times more energy, so this released on the order of 1,000× the energy of a magnitude 6.0 earthquake.
Its epicenter was located near 18.19°N, 102.53°W, at a depth of about 28 km — a shallow crustal earthquake. Shallow earthquakes like this release their energy close to the surface, which is why the shaking near the epicenter was so violent.
An estimated 9,500 people were killed.