Overview
Shaking rated at Mercalli intensity IX, the level at which substantial buildings suffer heavy damage and foundations are displaced, was assigned to the earthquake that struck Puebla on 30 July 1667. No magnitude or focal depth was reconstructed for the event, whose catalogue position is 18.8 N, 98.0 W, in the volcanic highlands east of the Valley of Mexico. Puebla stands among the stratovolcanoes of the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt and within reach of the deeper ruptures generated where the Cocos plate flattens beneath central Mexico, so the city receives strong shaking from more than one source. Its seventeenth-century churches and convents, many built of unreinforced stone, supplied the damage evidence from which the intensity rating was later derived. No casualty or loss figures accompany the entry.
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About This Earthquake
1667 Puebla, Mexico: magnitude unrecorded at depth unrecorded. No recorded casualties. Along the Cocos plate subduction zone off the Pacific coast.
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Frequently Asked Questions
The largest earthquake ever recorded was the 1960 Valdivia earthquake in Chile, at magnitude 9.5. It generated a tsunami that traveled across the Pacific Ocean and caused damage as far away as Hawaii and Japan. The earthquake killed approximately 1,655 people and left 2 million homeless.
The deadliest earthquake in recorded history was the 1556 Shaanxi earthquake in China, estimated at magnitude 8.0-8.3, which killed approximately 830,000 people. Many casualties resulted from the collapse of yaodong (cave dwellings) carved into loess cliffs. The 2010 Haiti earthquake (M7.0, ~316,000 deaths) was the deadliest in modern times.
Pre-instrumental earthquake magnitudes are estimated from written accounts of damage, felt reports, geological evidence such as fault scarps and liquefaction features, and tsunami records. These methods provide approximate magnitudes with typical uncertainties of 0.3-0.5 magnitude units.
QuakeFYI's historical database covers earthquakes from approximately 2150 BC to the present, with over 5,700 significant events. Written records from ancient China, Greece, and the Middle East provide some of the earliest accounts. Instrumental recording began around 1900 with the first standardized seismographs.
An earthquake swarm is a sequence of many earthquakes occurring in a localized area over weeks to months without a clear mainshock. Unlike aftershock sequences where one large event is followed by smaller ones, swarms have no single dominant event. They are often associated with volcanic activity or fluid migration in the crust.