Mexico city’s residents emotional and behavioural reactions to the 19 September 2017 earthquake

Highlights

• Results of Mexico City residents' emotional & behavioural reactions to the 2017 earthquake.

• During tremors, the reactions were escape, reaching and protecting people, seeking shelter.

• After earthquake, the actions were reuniting with family members, evacuation, returning to houses.

• The emotional reactions were fear followed by surprise.

Abstract

The paper presents the results of a cross-sectional study conducted in Mexico City following the earthquake that occurred on September 19, 2017. The sample size of the study was N = 2400. The aim has been the study of people's emotional and behavioural responses during and immediately after the tremors. Some of the results and conclusions were the following: a). During the tremors, respondents coping reactions were related to escape, reaching and protecting people, and seeking shelter; b). The actions taken by the respondents immediately after the tremor were reuniting with family members, evacuation, and returning to houses; c). The emotional responses of the participants of the study were fear and surprise; d). The capital city's residents exhibited a relatively high percentage of prosocial behaviour during the seismic emergency response; e). More generally, the residents of the city should be trained on what to do during and after the tremors; moreover, key decision-makers should consider people's emotional and behavioural responses to tremors when designing plans for mass emergencies following earthquakes, such as the present case study.

Introduction

Given the unpredictability of earthquakes and their power of destruction; that is, within a few or a fraction of seconds, they have caused death and destruction to communities living in highly seismic regions worldwide. For example, during the Mexico City earthquakes in 2017, residents experienced, among other, a variety of emotions and reactions during the tremors; some residents were screaming and shouting, some faint, others did not know what was going on and did not know what do. Having a better understanding on people's emotional and cognitive behaviours to earthquakes is essential, for example, in planning for mass emergencies (Alexander, 1990; Lindell et al., 2016; Prati et al., 2012, 2013).

However, research on people's responses during and immediately after the tremors is quite small in comparison, for example, to other natural hazards (e.g., tornadoes, hurricanes) (Lindell, 2012; Lindell et al., 2016). A few studies on this issue have been reported in the literature (Aguirre, 2005; Arnold et al., 1982; Bourque et al., 1993; Alexander, 1990; Ohta and Ohashi, 1985; Lindell et al., 2016; Prati et al., 2012; Goltz and Bourque, 2017), where a comprehensive literature review on people's response to earthquakes has been addressed.

It is not intended here to provide a full review on the subject; however, it is worth mentioning some of the works which the study is built upon; for example, the ‘basic’ emotions proposed by Ekman (1992); i.e., those associated with happiness, fear, sadness, anger, disgust, and surprise. In fact, these have been employed in the study on the emotional reactions to the tremors of the Umbria-Marche earthquake in Italy (Prati et al., 2012); for example, the authors found that the emotion associated with fear was the most frequent category on the response of the participants of the study. Further, one of the early studies on the emotional experiences during earthquakes was reported by Alexander (1990); the author found that behaviour in sudden onset disasters may vary with culture and past experience with hazards.

Prosocial behaviour, on the other hand, includes a broad range of actions intended to benefit others, for example, sharing, helping, cooperation, etc. (Slattery et al., 2019; Manesi et al., 2017; Nielson et al., 2017; Batson, 2011; Cialdini et al., 1987; Simpson and Willer, 2008). It has been the subject of great interest of researchers addressing social problems, (Martin et al., 2007; Schuyt et al., 2010), poverty eradication (Werlin, 2009), topics on initiatives of value to society (Glaser, 1992), and disaster relief (Zagefka and James, 2015; Manesi et al., 2019; Rao et al., 2011). It also has been studied in the aftermath of earthquakes (Prati et al., 2012). That is, it is common to see people assisting those affected by earthquakes; for example, during the Mexico City earthquake, thousands of people were helping rescue teams in trying to remove debris from the destroyed buildings (Rojas, 2017).

The motivation of the present study has been the need to conduct more studies on the behavioural and emotional responses to tremors; further, scholars in the field argued the need for similar studies in relation to developing countries (Lindell et al., 2016, p.108; Prati et al., 2012, p.450). The present study addressed Mexico City residents' reactions to the earthquake that hit the capital city on September 19, 2017. The influence of variables such as the demographics, the type of building, the place where the participants were at during the tremors on people's responses were also investigated. Hence, the aim of the present study is to fill the gap, and therefore, one should be able to see whether cultural differences contribute to the emotional responses to earthquakes.

Given to its geographical location, Mexico is exposed to several natural hazards that can (and have) lead to disasters. Among the natural hazard to which the country is mostly exposed, is that related to earthquakes, which historically have been of special significance, both for their frequency of occurrence and for the damage they have caused (Gutierrez-Martinez et al., 2014; SSN, 2019); in particular, those that have occurred in Mexico City in September 1985 and 2017. According to historical data, from 1990 to 2018, there has been a total of 1033 strong earthquakes with magnitudes ranging from 5.0 to 8.9 (SSN, 2019). Two of these were within the range of 8.0–8.9 in 1995 and 2017.

For example, in 2017 Mexico City's residents experienced two deadly earthquakes. The first one hit the city on 7 September at about midnight, 8.1 of magnitude and with the epicentre located in the Gulf of Tehuantepec, 800 km from the capital city (Santos-Reyes, 2019). The second quake, on the other hand, occurred on 19 September, i.e., twelve days in between them. The earthquake had a magnitude of M_w = 7.1 and the epicentre located inland, 120 km from the capital city; it hit the city at 13:14:40 h, local time. The earthquake killed about 370 people were killed, 6000 were injured, and over 200 buildings collapsed (Tajima and Hayashida, 2018).

The paper presents the results on the emotional and behavioural responses of the residents of the capital city in relation to the earthquake that occurred on September 19, 2017.