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M 7.1 - 5km ENE of Raboso, Mexico

Hundreds of fatalities with this one so far... Terrible
 
The video from this event is really scary. I expect sub-standard building codes in this region but some of those buildings just flat out collapsed. Makes me wonder how the buildings in the Southeast would manage with a New Madrid earthquake.
 
The video from this event is really scary. I expect sub-standard building codes in this region but some of those buildings just flat out collapsed. Makes me wonder how the buildings in the Southeast would manage with a New Madrid earthquake.
I have my doubts too. A lot of the soil types across the Southeast and the MS River Valley are sandy loams and sandy silts. When saturated (or even semi-saturated), you get a lot of liquefaction which basically turns the ground to liquid. That just kills what structural integrity of the building is there and they likely will be destroyed.
 
The video from this event is really scary. I expect sub-standard building codes in this region but some of those buildings just flat out collapsed. Makes me wonder how the buildings in the Southeast would manage with a New Madrid earthquake.
Some of those buildings fell like they were bricks balanced on toothpicks, and that's unfortunately how they were built - with no lateral shearing support. Soft story structure with no sheer wall and large open spaces at the bottom for parking.
 
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