Mexico city ran out of flat land some time ago, so now they are building up, the ones that can and have the money and enough land tear down the old house and build an apartment building with under ground garages where of course when it rains they will flood.
Those that do not construct a new structure build an add on to the old structure witch may or may not be damaged by previous quakes or might not be structurally sound or built to support aditional wheight on the load carring walls or as some do not have "castillos" rebar cages encased in concrete to anchor the bricks at the corners, when the vibration starts the walls go down.
Many of the structures that fell in the last two quakes were add ons or new construction done with poor planing and had ground floor garages on columns that coud not support the wheight when the ground vibrated, the colums litteraly exploded and the four or five floors above came down.
Today the rich want to live on the hill sides of the "serros" hills or the "barrancas" canyons, they construct on concrete and rebar stillts that go up to 5 or 6 stories so that Mr. Money can have a house and a garden that is flat, there is one house with a putting green on a canyon 5 stories above the canyon floor.
When the next big one hits it will be pretty bad, the area in front of Acapulco has not moved, it is a subduction area that is where the quake of 57 took place, it will probably be 8.0 or higher, we will see what is left standing and that coupled with the ground liquification, it is going to be nasty.
My house in Ciudad Satelite in on top of "tepetate" it is a type of rock, we need a big jack hammer to dig the trench for the new sewer line, the pick axe just bounses off with a few chips, we start feeling the 6.5 and up quakes as gentle motion, on the 7.2 my wife got uppset and told me to stop shaking the bed, I told her it is a "temblor" quake, we have a Swedish foam mattress that you can park a wine cup and jump nex to it and it does not spill, so quakes are neat in bed.
I will leave you now, the micro lion is roaring for its cat chaw.
Quédense con calma que la cosa es sacudida.
navegator
