1985 Mexico City Earthquake - Human Toll in The City

Human Toll in The City

To this day, the death toll has been in dispute. About 5,000 bodies were recovered from the debris and represent the total of legally certified deaths but does not include those who were missing and never recovered. Reports have numbered the dead anywhere from 5,000 to 30,000 (claimed by a number of citizens’ groups) to 45,000 claimed by the Mexican National Seismological Centre. However, the most commonly cited figures are around 10,000. While high as an absolute number, it compares to other earthquakes of similar strength in Asia and other parts of Latin America where death tolls have run between 66,000 and 242,000 for earthquakes of magnitude 7.8 or above. Part of the explanation for that was the hour in which the earthquake struck, approximately 7:20 am, when people were awake but not in the many schools and office buildings that were severely damaged.

However, the death toll was great enough to necessitate the use of the IMSS baseball field as a morgue, using ice to conserve bodies for identification.

The main reason that the figures have been disputed is the government’s response to the tragedy. President Miguel de la Madrid ordered a news blackout and did not address the situation at all for 39 hours after the event. When the government did give estimates of the number dead, they vacillated between 7,000 to 35,000 people. Consequently, most of the populace believes that the true numbers have never been revealed.

According to government figures, approximately 250,000 people lost their homes directly due to the earthquake. Unofficial sources put that figure much higher. Some sources state that more than 50,000 families lost their homes, and INEGI reports that 700,000 people in the Federal District and the suburbs in the State of Mexico lost their homes.