Cable car swings wildly in Mexico City after powerful earthquake

Mayor says power was restored to Cablebus and metro following 7.1 magnitude tremor

Video showing a cable car swinging above the streets of Mexico City after an earthquake (ElUniversal/Twitter)

At least one person has been killed in a powerful earthquake in Mexico, which caused a cable car to swing wildly above the streets of the capital, Mexico City.

Video shared on social media on Tuesday showed the cable car suspended above Iztapalapa, a municipality immediately southwest of Mexico City, which felt the 7.1 magnitude quake despite being 370 kilometres away from its epicentre.

Traffic on line 2 of the Cablebus, which was only inaugurated last month, appeared to stop completely. The single blue cable car could be seen swinging violently, apparently because of a power outage that caused 1.6 million users to go without electricity.

The mayor of Mexico City, Claudia Sheinbau, confirmed later on Tuesday that the Cablebus was again working, as was the city’s metro, according to The New York Times.

Both forms of public transport suffered brief shutdowns in the aftermath of the quake, which was centred not far from Acapulco, a city on the Pacific coast, and hundreds of miles south of the capital.

Residents of Mexico City, which is more than 370 kilomteres away from Acapulco, could feel the tremor. As well as the cable car shutting down, some neighbourhoods were briefly left without power, according to reports.

While there were no deaths reported in Mexico City, one man was killed by a falling post in a town not far from where the quake hit, officials confirmed.

The quake follows four years after a 8.2 magnitude earthquake struck the coast off Chiapas, a state in southern Mexico. It destroyed most of the town of Juchitan in neighbouring Oaxaca state, and the deaths of dozens.

Additional reporting by The Associated Press.