talking to us. glad your family s okay and appreciate all you re doing. thank you so much. thank you guys. two natural disasters unfolding. more from mexico city throughout the next two hours. the others, hurricane maria category 5 storm could do more damage to puerto rico. our meteorologist tom slater with more. break down for us where exactly was impacted by this earthquake today? the 7.1 that took over 5,000 lives. anything that s within 42 miles is considered shallow. of course the closer to the surface the more shaky but if it s 75 miles south southeast of mexico city. typically we ll have 18.0 a year, that one came 11 days ago. we ve had a few of those.
populated in the world. and that plays a large role in the intensity and how everything plays out. i want to show you this in this topsoil when you have the intense shake you can bring the water table up and liquify the soil. that water table comes up to the top. the buildings begin to collapse. this played out on a similar manner back in 1985 when we had the quake that was a greater than 8.0 magnitude. a similar event here with a shaking being felt through a large area. we re also watching an incredible, absolutely incredible hurricane in maria hat a healthy category 5, st. croix in the crosshairs of this system. the wind gusts pushing up to 200 miles an hour.
have pointed out this earthquake is not related to the one on september 7, a magnitude of 8.1. how is that important and how do they know? the eni center of that quake was further away. mexico is an active place for earthquakes. when you look at the ring of fire as it s known, the most earthquake prone areas on our planet, it goes along the coast of mexico and comes down to portions of south america, where 90% of the quakes occur. so the epicenter of that particular one farther away. people think was it that one that instigated this one? not necessarily how it works either. so this is independent of it on a different location. but again, you look at the numbers, only 15 or so quakes are 7.0 or up to 8.0. two have happened in the last 11 days. yeah. pedram, thank you for that. we ll turn now to hurricane maria. puerto rico is bracing for a
are they related though, i don t think so. if you have an 8.0 like we had 11 days ago you can have one aftershock that s a 7.0 but it s nowhere near that map. it s well down the south where the aftershocks were. we got over 14 1/2 million with moderate shaking. strong over 15 million, 1.6 very strong and that means everything. whether you look at a 7.1 you can have one aftershock. that s ten at 6.1 and over a hundred at four. we ll see more damage unfold. the usg s in the computer models speck dated a 91% chance of fay taltz and we re in that area right now. as far as what we re looking at as far as maria another devastation story. how many times do we have to say the word catastrophic this month. what s the latest on that
32 years ago they had a massive 8.0 that killed nearly 10,000 people and so it was just cruel coincidence that they got another major rattler on that date. you re talking about earthquake response and how they were preparing for this because this was on the anniversary of the 1985 quake. building structures, building codes, i know mexico is build on an ancient link bed, there s a lot of sand that can lick qui fi and the building codes there changed dramatically after that. they had to be fortified. in mexico city, were the buildings brought up to date? were they fortified after that last quake and are we seeing evidence that obviously or seems at least that they were not done so adequately. i mean, obviously after that quake in 85, they strengthen the building codes there and there s been a lot of new construction.