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Strong quake off Guatemala kills 39, felt in Mexico City

Residents begin clearing rubble from a damaged building after a magnitude 7.4 earthquake struck in San Marcos, Guatemala, Wednesday, Nov. 7, 2012. The mountain village, some 80 miles (130 kilometers) from the epicenter, suffered much of the damage with some 30 homes collapsing in its center. There are three confirmed dead and many missing after the strongest earthquake to hit Guatemala since a deadly 1976 quake that killed 23,000. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)

By Mike McDonald | Reuters

GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) - A strong earthquake off the coast of Guatemala shook buildings in the capital and killed at least 39 people on Wednesday, trapping others under rubble and triggering evacuations as far away as Mexico City.

The 7.4 magnitude quake hit at 10:35 a.m. local time (11:35 EDT). A local fire chief said at least some of the dead were buried under debris in a mountainous region near the Mexican border.

Landslides blocked roads in some areas, authorities said, and about 40 houses were severely damaged.

It was the strongest earthquake to hit Guatemala since a 7.5 magnitude quake in 1976 that claimed more than 20,000 lives.

President Otto Perez said that as many as 100 people were unaccounted for, based on reports from relatives.

"These are preliminary figures and we don't have them confirmed," Perez said in Guatemala City. "Our priority is to focus on lives, rescuing people and treating the wounded."

San Marcos state governor Luis Rivera confirmed the deaths of 39 people, adding that the state government offices were almost completely destroyed.

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Deadly Spain Earthquake Triggered By Groundwater Removal

By Becky Oskin, OurAmazingPlanet Staff Writer | LiveScience.com

In this May 12, 2011 file photo, a police officer inspects damage caused by an earthquake the previous day in Lorca, Spain, Thursday, May 12, 2011. Farmers drilling ever deeper wells over decades to water their crops likely contributed to a deadly earthquake in southern Spain last year, a new study suggests. The findings may add to concerns about the effects of new energy extraction and waste disposal technologies. (AP Photo/Alberto Saiz, File)

Groundwater removal triggered the unusually shallow and deadly earthquake that hit Lorca, Spain, in 2011, according to a new study.

Scientists have known for decades that pumping water into the Earth can set off small earthquakes. But this is the first time that removing water has been identified as an earthquake trigger, researchers said. Both the size and the location of the quake were influenced by groundwater pumping, the study found.

"The fact that the very tiny stress changes due to normal processes, such as the extraction of groundwater, could have an effect on very large systems such as faults, that's very surprising," said Pablo González, lead study author and a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Western Ontario in Canada.

The researchers were also able to precisely calculate the physical changes that generated the quake. The results will help seismologists better understand the physics that control when an earthquake starts and stops — an important step in predicting when and where a quake will occur, and its size.

"We need observations of this sort to calibrate physical models" of faults, said Jean-Philippe Avouac, a geologist at Caltech in Pasadena, Calif., who was not involved in the study. "The initiation and arrest of [fault] ruptures are something we are trying to constrain," he told Our Amazing Planet.

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