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The Mexico City earthquake
Mexico City is built on the bed of a drained lake, and its ground is soft clay rather than solid rock. The earthquake's epicentre was four hundred kilometres away, and that the damage in the capital was nonetheless so severe is due to a resonance effect in the lake clay, now a standard case in earthquake engineering. Politically it was a turning point: the government's response was so weak that neighbourhoods organised the rescue themselves, and the networks that formed are identified as one root of the democratisation that ended PRI rule in 2000.
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