On Tuesday Sept. 19 at 1:19pm an earthquake hit southern Mexico, the quake was a 7.1 on the richter scale and is the most disastrous quake that has hit the country since 1985. The richter scale is a scale that is used to measure the severity of an earthquake. The scale is numbered between 1.0 and 9.0 (and possibly larger) the higher the number on the scale the more chaos that follows. On Sept. 19 1985 Mexico had a quake that reached a 8.0 and aftershocks as large as 7.5 in the days and weeks following the initial strike. On the quake that hit last Tuesday there have aftershock quake ranging from 4.8 to as high as a 6.1. Nicole Orth, a student in Mexico, recalls the moments leading up to the earthquake.

“I did not know what was happening and I thought people were making a joke about it since in the morning we had an earthquake simulation commemorating the 1985 earthquake.” Orth said. “I fortunately was on the outside of the school eating lunch with my friends. But when we felt the earthquake was when our table literally lifted us from the floor, and for like one second when we stood up it was difficult to walk. Meanwhile that was happening students rushed down the hallway, screaming and panic overwhelmed the city and school, since the telephone line did not work.”

The earthquake caused telephone lines to go down, windows shattered, homes and buildings collapsed. The southern region was in complete and utter chaos.

On the morning of Sept. 19 at 7:17 am a quake hit Mexico City, the quake which registered as an 8.1 on the richter scale the results, identical to the one that hit this Tuesday.  Buildings collapsed where they stood, people trapped inside their houses due to walls concaving. Fires and explosions started erupting due to the quake breaking gas mains.  The quake left 5,000 dead, 30,000 injured and left thousands more homeless.

The earthquake that happened tuesday has had the death toll rises to 320 bodies recovered as of 8 am Sept. 25, the search for survivors continues. Thousands of Mexicans have been left homeless. Nonetheless the civilian of Mexico have come together to collect medical supplies, food and clothes for the victims of the quake.