Manzanillo Earthquakes Today: Live Map & the 1995 M8.0 Colima Quake

Manzanillo, Mexico's busiest Pacific container port in the state of Colima, sits directly above the boundary where the small Rivera plate and the larger Cocos plate both subduct beneath the North American plate along the Middle America Trench. This stretch of coastline, running roughly from Jalisco through Colima, is one of the most seismically active in the country, capable of producing earthquakes above magnitude 8.

On 9 October 1995, a magnitude 8.0 earthquake ruptured offshore near Manzanillo, killing at least 49 people and triggering a tsunami with waves up to five metres that struck the coast within minutes, sweeping away beachfront hotels and fishing communities. It remains one of the largest earthquakes recorded in Mexico in the last century, part of a subduction segment that had also produced the devastating 1932 Jalisco earthquakes (magnitude 8.2, followed by a 7.8 aftershock) — at the time the strongest pair of quakes ever recorded in Mexico.

Mexico's National Seismological Service (Servicio Sismológico Nacional) and the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center both monitor this coast closely, since the same Rivera-Cocos subduction segment is considered capable of rupturing again. After 1995, Manzanillo and Colima state strengthened tsunami evacuation planning and coastal building codes, and the port city today sits among the handful of Mexican Pacific coast cities where residents are taught to move immediately to higher ground after any strong, prolonged shaking, without waiting for an official tsunami alert.