The epicentre of the powerful tremor was near Pinotepa de Don Luis in Oaxaca state, the US Geological Survey said.

Friday’s quake was 24.6km underground. Some buildings were damaged in Oaxaca, but no deaths were reported.

A helicopter carrying the interior minister and Oaxaca’s governor crashed in the state, killing two people.

Interior Minister Alfonso Navarrete and Governor Alejandro Murat were not seriously injured, officials said. They were surveying the damage caused by the quake.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said that there was no tsunami threat.

After the tremor, thousands of people were seen fleeing buildings in Mexico City as the ground shook.

Some were crying, while others hugged each other on the streets of the capital. Traffic stopped for a few minutes.

The authorities activated earthquake alert systems in four states and Mexico City. They urged residents to stay outdoors.

Clouds of dust rose near buildings already damaged by two quakes last September

Last September, two devastating earthquakes in Mexico killed hundreds of people.

“Since 19 September we haven’t been that scared,” said shoemaker Luis Rodríguez in Mexico City.

But another woman said: “It is very scary to think your house can fall over you any second.”

There were clouds of dust near buildings already damaged by the September quakes.

Mexico is one of the most seismically active regions in the world, sitting on top of three of the Earth’s largest tectonic plates – the North American, Cocos and Pacific plates.

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Source: BBC

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The 8.1 magnitude quake left at least 61 people dead, according to officials.

Another 200 people were injured, President Enrique Peña Nieto said, as he declared a national day of mourning.

Meanwhile, the feared category one Hurricane Katia, which struck Veracruz on the east coast on Saturday, has been downgraded to a tropical storm.
The US National Hurricane Center reported Katia had been rapidly weakening ever since making landfall, but local officials are worried the storm could still cause landslides and flooding.

Rescue efforts following the earthquake, which struck late on Thursday, are focussing on the worst-hit states of Tabasco, Oaxaca and Chiapas.

Tens of thousands of emergency packs, as well as 100 extra police officers and rescue dogs were sent to Juchitán, Oaxaca, said to be the worst affected town.

The earthquake is the most powerful anywhere in the world since September 2015, but its depth – 70km according to the US Geological Service – means that the shaking felt at the surface was less strong than it would have been for an equally powerful but shallower tremor.

At least 36 people have been reported dead in Juchitán, according to news agency AFP, with the town hall and a number of other buildings destroyed or badly damaged.

“The situation is Juchitán is critical; this is the most terrible moment in its history,” said Mayor Gloria Sanchez.

Police officer Vidal Vera, 29, who had not slept in more than 36 hours, told AFP: “I can’t remember an earthquake this terrible.

“The whole city is a disaster zone right now. Lots of damage. Lots of deaths. I don’t know how you can make sense of it. It’s hard. My sister-in-law’s husband died. His house fell on top of him.”

Mr Peña Nieto, who visited the town on Friday, said flags would fly at half-mast on Saturday out of respect for the dead and bereaved.

The president said 45 deaths had been reported in Oaxaca, 12 in Chiapas and four in Tabasco.
The BBC’s Arturo Wallace says the affected region is the poorest and least developed part of Mexico and the full extent of the damage is yet to become clear.

At least one other person was killed in Guatemala, its president has said.

The huge quake struck at 23:50 local time on Thursday (04:50 GMT Friday), shaking buildings and causing panic hundreds of miles away in the capital, Mexico City.

The earthquake also triggered a tsunami warning and the evacuation of thousands of people in coastal communities in Chiapas. The warning was later lifted.

Throughout Friday, the region was shaken with scores of aftershocks.

President Peña Nieto’s office said he would travel to Chiapas to survey the damage.

Pope Francis, addressing an open air Mass on a visit to Colombia, said he was praying “for those who have lost their lives and their families”.

The earthquake was more powerful than the 1985 tremor which hit close to Mexico City and caused thousands of deaths. Correspondents say the death toll appears to have been lower because it struck further away from highly populated areas.

Journalist Franc Contreras, who was in Mexico City, told the BBC: “You could hear loud cracks in the concrete. It sounded like a giant wooden branch being just broken open violently.

“People were streaming out of the hallways. And everybody walking out single file into the streets, trying to avoid overhead power lines.”

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Source: BBC

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The US Geological Survey said the magnitude-7.8 quake hit just after midnight (11:02 GMT on Sunday), some 95km (59 miles) from Christchurch.

The tsunami arrived in the north-eastern coast about two hours later. Officials said the first waves may not be the largest, with tsunami activity possible for several hours.

Residents were warned to head inland or for higher ground along the coast.

A gauge at Kaikoura, 181 km (112 miles) north of Christchurch, measured a wave of 2.5m (8ft 2ins), according to Weatherwatch.co.nz.

Smaller waves are said to be arriving in Wellington and other areas, the website said.

But the ministry of civil defence has said the highest waves, which could be as tall as 5m are expected between Malborough, the north-eastern tip of the South Island, and Banks Peninsula, just south of Christchurch.

Terrifying

Residents in the Chatham Islands, an archipelago 423 miles (680km) south-east of the mainland, were also being warned a wave would hit imminently by the civil defence.

Thousands of people have already evacuated their homes as aftershocks continue to hit the area, Radio New Zealand reported.

Others have taken to social media to offer people a safe bed for the night.

New Zealand lies on the notorious Ring of Fire, the line of frequent quakes and volcanic eruptions that circles virtually the entire Pacific rim.

Christchurch is still recovering from the 2011 earthquake that killed 185 people and destroyed the city centre.

The Herald newspaper said the tremor was felt all the way to Wellington, where sirens sounded and people fled buildings into the streets, some of them crying.

Early reports suggested some houses in Cheviot town, near the epicentre, have been damaged.

But Chris Hill, a fire officer in Cheviot, said officials had gone door to door evacuating residents and found “everyone seems okay”.

He told RadioNZ: “There’s a lot of debris in houses, but at this stage it doesn’t look like anything too bad has happened.”

New Zealand’s GeoNet suggests the earthquake may have been only a magnitude-5.5 tremor.

A resident of Christchurch said the tremor lasted a “long” time.

“We were asleep and woken to the house shaking, it kept going and going and felt like it was going to build up,” she told AFP news agency.

On Twitter, Hayley Colgan described it as “the the most terrifying earthquake I think I’ve felt in my 23 years in New Zealand”.

A magnitude-7.1 quake struck 169km (105 miles) north-east of Gisborne on the North Island in September, sparking a tsunami warning. It caused some damage to property, but no injuries.

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Source: BBC

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