TAPACHULA, Mexico. A strong earthquake shook the Mexico-Guatemala border early Sunday, sending frightened residents into the streets.
The tremor occurred shortly before 6 a.m. near the Mexican border city of Suchiate, where a river of the same name divides the two countries. The epicenter occurred off the Pacific coast, 16 kilometers (10 miles) west-southwest of Brisas Barra de Suchiate, where the river empties into the sea.
The earthquake had a preliminary magnitude of 6.4, according to the United States Geological Survey, and a depth of 47 miles (75 kilometers).
In Mexico, there were no immediate reports of damage, but the more mountainous and remote areas of the border are prone to landslides.
Across the border, Guatemala’s national disaster prevention agency shared photos of small landslides on roads in the Quetzaltenango region and large cracks in the walls of a hospital in San Marcos on its social media accounts, but there were no reports of deaths.
In Tapachula, near the border, civil defense brigades scoured the city looking for signs of damage.
Didier Solares, a Civil Defense official in Suchiate, said that so far they have found no damage.
“Fortunately, everything is fine,” Solares said. “We are talking with the companies, with the (rural areas) via radio and there is nothing, there is no damage, thank God,” he said.
The early morning earthquake still scared people.
In the mountainous and picturesque colonial city of San Cristóbal, the shaking was strong.
“We get up here because we have the seismic alert service,” said resident Joaquín Morales. “The alert woke me up because it arrived 30 seconds before (the earthquake).”
In Tuxtla Chico, a town near Tapachula, María Guzmán, a teacher, said: “It was horrible, it felt strong. “It was a real scare.”
Later on Sunday, there was a series of at least two dozen small earthquakes in the northern Mexican state of Baja California, near the U.S. border. The largest of the earthquakes was magnitude 4.6, while the majority were between 2.5 and 3.7.
No immediate damage was reported in the sparsely populated region about 30 miles (50 kilometers) south of a relatively unpopulated area south of El Centro, California.
They did not appear to be related to the earthquake in Suchiate, which is located nearly 3,750 kilometers (2,330 miles) to the southeast.
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