The Earth Moved

It came just as Mexico City's leisurely, three-hour pause for lunch was beginning. Downtown pavements were crowded with office workers. In the narrow streets that lead to the wide Zocalo traffic inched forward, horns blasting imperiously. Then the earth moved.

Instantly the streets were silent. Traffic halted, pedestrians stood still, blankly staring. In the Avenida Juarez a beer sign clattered to the sidewalk. The twin towers of the cathedral swayed gently, and their bells tinkled as if. touched softly by the hand of God. Cracks crept across the pavements, windows rattled. . . .

So, last week, another earthquake came to Mexico City. There was no need to tell any Mexican what it was. As the first quiver became a convulsive shock, clerks and politicos, smartly dressed girls and beggars dropped on their knees in the streets to pray.

Fires broke out, spreading a pall of smoke over the city. Worst was the blaze that destroyed the El Monte lumberyard in the business district. Firemen, soldiers and police fought it for six hours, in desperation when apparatus ran short called out an ancient steam pumper that rumbled through the streets, belching a black column from its smokestack. Mexico's tallest skyscraper, a nearly completed, 17-story office building at the corner of the handsome Paseo de la Reforma and the Avenida del Ejido, shook and cracked as the city rocked. A five-story section of glass and facing stone collapsed, sent rubble crashing down on the sidewalk.

Mild was the temblor felt in Mexico's capital compared with the spasm that shook provincial cities. Mexico City, reclaimed from swamp, rests on a shock-absorbing cushion of mud. The earthquake's center was on the Pacific Coast, between Manzanillo and the beach resort of Acapulco. From there it spread fanwise through the hills, north to Jalisco, south to Oaxaca.

Hardest hit was the tropical city of Colima (pop. 20,000) in the foothills near the coast. At the first shock the dam guarding Colima's water supply collapsed, power lines went down, communications were cut off. Half the buildings in Colima crumbled into dust. The cathedral, rebuilt after the quake that struck Colima in 1932, was destroyed again. That night Colima was lighted up by the dull glow of forest fires, touched off by the city's charcoal-burning dumps when panic-stricken workers abandoned them.

While President Manuel Avila Camacho rushed troops and supplies to Colima by plane, Mexico set about the methodical task of totting up its damage. Dead were at least 84 people, including 36 at Colima, 27 at Tuxpan in the State of Jalisco. Mexico City miraculously suffered no casualties. Property losses were reckoned at more than $2,000,000. Of these, some $800,000 were in Mexico City.

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