Catastrophe risk modeller Karen Clark & Company (KCC) has estimated that a recent M7.0 earthquake near Acapulco City in Mexico will drive close to $200 million of insured losses.
The earthquake occurred on September 7th, and is expected to result in economic losses of around $900 million.
While major structural damage has not been widely reported, there have been some instances of collapsed walls and reports of damage to hotels and other buildings.
KCC believes that significant damages will be restricted only to vulnerable structures, such as unreinforced masonry buildings.
Power outages have also been reported throughout the region and have affected over a million customers, including scattered outages in Mexico City.
One factor that continues to compound quake losses in Mexico City is the location of the city on a former lakebed, the loose sediment of which amplifies ground motions.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration initially issued a tsunami warning following the M7.0 earthquake, but it was later called off.
Earthquakes are a fairly common occurrence in Mexico due to its positioning at the edge of the North American tectonic plate. Two major quakes struck the country in September 2017, and on September 19, 1985, a magnitude-8.0 temblor killed an estimated 9,500 people in and around Mexico City.
