Scared families south of the Mexico-California border slept outside for a second night on Monday after a big earthquake tore cracks in roads and houses and dozens of aftershocks rattled the area.
Two people died and more than 200 were injured on Sunday when a magnitude 7.2 quake rocked the area around the border city of Mexicali. Baja California Governor Jose Osuna said the victims were crushed by a collapsed house and a falling wall.
The tremor, felt as far north as Los Angeles, cracked main roads, toppled electricity posts and knocked down an empty multistory parking lot under construction in Mexicali, a prosperous industrial city and busy border crossing.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Dozens of smaller tremors continued to shake buildings in Mexicali, adding to fears of another big quake. On top of those opting to sleep outdoors, Osuna said 3,500 people with badly damaged homes would be moved to shelters.
In the nearby town of Guadalupe Victoria, near the quake’s epicenter, officials passed out water, blankets and food to scores of people camping in tents or cars, too afraid to return home. One person dragged a mattress outside to sleep on.
“We’re panicking over the aftershocks,” said Juana Cabrera, who spent Sunday night on the street with 20 family members including a three-month-old baby and a 68-year-old grandmother after a wall in her house fell down.
Broken gas pipes sparked fires on Sunday — burning down a department store in the border town of San Luis Rio Colorado — and briefly darkened streets in Mexicali causing car accidents, but no major buildings collapsed.
Power was mostly re-established in Mexicali on Monday, but some hospitals lay patients out on beds in parking lots due to worries over cracked walls. Many stores, banks and restaurants stayed shut, with employees frightened to return to work.
“With the number of aftershocks we’ve had, the likelihood of another 6 or 7 magnitude earthquake is very real,” Erik Pounders, a geologist at the US Geological Survey, said. “There might be a few structures that just barely made it through and the second one could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.”
A highway connecting Mexicali with the nearby border city of Tijuana on the Pacific coast was ruptured by a crevice at least a meter deep, according to one witness.
A liquefied natural gas import terminal south of Tijuana was not damaged however, operator Sempra Energy said.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un sent Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) greetings with what appeared to be restrained rhetoric that comes as Pyongyang moves closer to Russia and depends less on its long-time Asian ally. Kim wished “the Chinese people greater success in building a modern socialist country,” in a reply message to Xi for his congratulations on North Korea’s birthday, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported yesterday. The 190-word dispatch had little of the florid language that had been a staple of their correspondence, which has declined significantly this year, an analysis by Seoul-based specialist service NK Pro showed. It said
On an island of windswept tundra in the Bering Sea, hundreds of miles from mainland Alaska, a resident sitting outside their home saw — well, did they see it? They were pretty sure they saw it — a rat. The purported sighting would not have gotten attention in many places around the world, but it caused a stir on Saint Paul Island, which is part of the Pribilof Islands, a birding haven sometimes called the “Galapagos of the north” for its diversity of life. That is because rats that stow away on vessels can quickly populate and overrun remote islands, devastating bird
‘CLOSER TO THE END’: The Ukrainian leader said in an interview that only from a ‘strong position’ can Ukraine push Russian President Vladimir Putin ‘to stop the war’ Decisive actions by the US now could hasten the end of the Russian war against Ukraine next year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday after telling ABC News that his nation was “closer to the end of the war.” “Now, at the end of the year, we have a real opportunity to strengthen cooperation between Ukraine and the United States,” Zelenskiy said in a post on Telegram after meeting with a bipartisan delegation from the US Congress. “Decisive action now could hasten the just end of Russian aggression against Ukraine next year,” he wrote. Zelenskiy is in the US for the UN
A 64-year-old US woman took her own life inside a controversial suicide capsule at a Swiss woodland retreat, with Swiss police on Tuesday saying several people had been arrested. The space-age looking Sarco capsule, which fills with nitrogen and causes death by hypoxia, was used on Monday outside a village near the German border. The portable human-sized pod, self-operated by a button inside, has raised a host of legal and ethical questions in Switzerland. Active euthanasia is banned in the country, but assisted dying has been legal for decades. On the same day it was used, Swiss Department of Home