Roads were torn up, buildings cracked and electricity posts toppled today after a 7.2 magnitude earthquake shook cities in northern Mexico and Southern California, but few casualties were reported.
Mexican civil protection officials said at least one man died in a collapsed house and about 100 more were injured yesterday's quake. Another person was killed in a car crash in Mexicali, a border city near the epicentre of the earthquake, which was almost entirely without power.
Some buildings in Mexicali appeared to have structural damage and many had cracked floors, walls and broken windows, though no major buildings collapsed.
A major highway connecting Mexicali with Tijuana on the Pacific coast was badly damaged by a crack that opened up that was at least a metre deep, according to a Reuters witness.
People returning from their Easter holidays found themselves snarled in huge traffic jams with many motorists reporting difficulty finding fuel.
Despite the relatively light casualties, the powerful quake rattled nerves in the United States and across tremor-prone Latin America in the aftermath of devastating earthquakes in Haiti and Chile this year.
Hours after the earthquake, telephone and electricity crews struggled to restore service in Mexicali and the surrounding area, which is home to more than one million people and is a prosperous centre for food processing and assembly for exports.
The relatively shallow quake was centred in a lightly populated area in northeastern Baja California. For several hours a series of aftershocks rocked the area around the epicentre, 30 miles southeast of Mexicali.
Across the border in the US town of Calexico, eight downtown blocks were closed off with police securing the area against looters.
Reuters