7.2 Earthquake Kills 2 in Mexico Near US Border

A strong 7.2-magnitude earthquake that has killed at least two people sent jolts hundreds of kilometers from the quake’s center in the western Mexico-U.S. border region.

Reports said most of the damage from Sunday’s earthquake happened in Mexicali, the capital of Mexico’s Baja California state, and in the town of Calexico in the U.S. state of California.

Mexicali emergency official Alfredo Escobedo said the quake collapsed a house, killing one person. About 100 other people in the city were injured.

He also said a car hit and killed a man in Mexicali after he ran out of his home during the earthquake.

Much of the city of nearly a million people was without electricity. The quake brought down power lines and cracked roads.

Fire Chief Pete Mercado in the California town of Calexico reported damaged buildings there.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the center of the earthquake was in Baja California at a depth of about 10 kilometers, roughly 170 kilometers from Tijuana, Mexico.

People in Los Angeles, California and as far east as Phoenix, Arizona felt the earthquake.

The USGS recorded several aftershocks. The biggest was a 5.1-magnitude tremor in Imperial, California, just north of the border.

Sunday’s earthquake was the third large quake in the Western Hemisphere this year. One in Chile killed hundreds of people in February, while an earthquake in Haiti killed about 300,000 people in January.