Magnitude 5.1 Earthquake Hits Mexico City, No Damages Reported

An earthquake that registered at 5.1 on the richter scale rocked Mexico City today. The epicenter of the earthquake was registered near Mexico's southwestern coast in Ometepec, Guerrero around 11:50 Tuesday morning. No damages have been reported from the earthquake.

Soon after the earthquake, Mexico City's Governor Miguel Angel Mancera tweeted, "It's shaking, we will begin monitoring the city #mm."

Firefighters, paramedics and police set up checkpoints and went around the city reviewing for damages or incidents, but nothing out of the ordinary was reported. Minutes later, Mancera took to his Twitter account once more to confirm that there had been no damages in the city.

"We have concluded the revision protocols and we confirm there were no damages and no injuries in the City #mm," Mancera tweeted.

Some 800 government workerd were evicted from the offices of the Ministry of Education, which is located in the neighborhood known as Arcos de Belén near downton Mexico City. The public workers stood in the middle of the road, waiting for coordinators to let them back in their offices.

The headquarters of the PGJDF (Mexico City's Attorney General's Office) were also evacuated, but most of the employees were not worried because they perceived it to be a low intensity quake. An hour later they returned to their posts, although some remained worried about a second wave, which are sometimes of higher intensity.

Initially, it was reported that the intensity was 5.4 on the Richter scale, but it was later adjusted to 5.1. Mexico has been hit by a number of earthquakes this year of varying intensity, as well as continuous activity from its volcano The Popocateptl.

Authorities remain on high alert year round in a number of neighborhoods, which are seen as being at a greater risk in case a high intensity earthquake was to hit the city. These zones are seen as problematic because of their high density of inhabitants and the older buildings, which have not been repaired and are specially vulnerable.

Downtown Mexico City, along with centric neighborhoods such as Condesa, Juarez, Colonia Roma, Narvarte, Obrera, Tlatelolco and Del Valle, are all seen as places that harbor older structures that could be at high risk in an emergency scenario. Those neighborhoods were specially hard hit in 1985 when a 7.9 earthquake hit Mexico City and led to a high number of casualties.