At least 60 people were killed after an earthquake rocked Mexico

News24xx.com - After an earthquake rocked Mexico late Thursday night, September 7 2017, at least 60 people were killed.

The earthquake magnitude-8.1 went out in Mexico City, some 650 miles from the epicenter leveling buildings in southern Mexico, triggering tsunami warnings in several countries and causing people to flee into the street.

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto called it the strongest quake the country has seen in a century. The U.S. Geological Survey measured it at 8.1 magnitude, though initial reports said 8.2. More than 1.85 million electricity customers had been affected, Pena Nieto said, with nearly 200,000 still facing outages.

 

The death toll rose after 45 people were confirmed dead in the southern state of Oaxaca, 12 people in Chiapas and three others in the Gulf coast state of Tabasco, the head of Mexico's civil defense agency confirmed to The Associated Press.

Eduardo Mendoza, senior program manager for Direct Relief told the small town of Juchitan in Oaxaca state was completely leveled.

Direct Relief is a California-based nonprofit that since 1948 has supplied medicine to poverty or emergency-stricken regions.

He said that many Mexicans could be in need of water after public utilities were damaged and that many in the affected area live in vulnerable adobe cinder block homes, including some who have chronic illnesses.

 

The Mexico City fire department told on early Friday that there were no casualties locally.

Mexico's Pacific coastal areas -- as well as the coastlines of Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Costa Rica -- experienced some tsunami waves, with some over 3 feet off the coast of Salina Cruz.

Residents in Chiapas were evacuated from the coast around 5 a.m. ET as a precaution against tsunami conditions, AP reported.