Ever since the 1985 earthquake which claimed the lives of more than 9,500 people, September 19 has been designated Día Nacional de Protección Civil (National Civil Protection Day).
Key components of this commemoration are the earthquake evacuation drills that take place around the nation in government buildings, schools, hospitals and private offices.
State authorities said more than a million people participated in drills carried out across Jalisco on Tuesday, in a “hypothetical simulation of a 7.2 earthquake centered in the vicinity of Chapala.” (See Chapala evacuation, page 16.)
At 11 a.m. on the dot, thousands of people poured onto the streets of downtown Guadalajara, as firefighters simulated dousing fires and removing victims from damaged buildings.
The complete evacuation of the state Government Palace was achieved in a record time of just under three minutes, said Víctor Hugo Roldan, director of the Jalisco Civil Protection unit.
Jalisco lies in a seismically active zone where earthquakes are a constant threat. In scientific terms, the state is close to a complex convergent boundary where the Rivera Plate and the Cocos Plate are being subducted beneath the North American Plate.
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