Capitalinos in a street of the Historic Center when listening to the seismic alert, this Monday. Moisés Pablo Nava (Cuartoscuro)
The noisy seismic alert of Mexico City has been activated on Monday in several parts of the capital, although no tremor has been registered. The head of the government of Mexico City has attributed what happened to "a human error". "We apologize to everyone, it was part of the review process that is normally done of the alarms," he lamented at a press conference after the event flooded social networks with comments about the event.
"It was not a scheduled review process, but they were maintaining the server," added the head of government, who believes that a review of public servants and companies that were doing the review must be made. The alert has sounded only in some parts of the capital, through 851 of the 13,772 speakers that are distributed throughout the city. The Command, Control, Computing, Communications and Citizen Contact Center (C5) of Mexico City has indicated that they maintain the work to know the specific causes that have detonated the sound of the alarm.
The SkyAlert platform – dedicated to the warning of earthquakes and natural hazards – affirmed, minutes before the statements of the authorities appeared, that they did not have any record of earthquakes in any part of the country. Mexico is one of the countries in the world with the highest seismic activity, with more than 90 earthquakes greater than 4 degrees on the Richter scale per year, 60% of all telluric movements recorded in the world, according to the Secretariat of Integral Risk Management and Civil Protection of the capital.
Mexico City has experienced three catastrophic earthquakes in recent decades. On March 14, 1979, an earthquake of 7.6 shook the capital, causing the collapse of three buildings of the Universidad Iberoamericana and affecting around 600 buildings. On September 19, 1985, one of 8.1 degrees caused between 3,000 and 20,000 deaths, according to different estimates and the devastation of the century in the country. On September 19, 2017, a 7.1 magnitude earthquake returned terror to the city, leaving 369 dead.
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