November 14, 1816 Tsunami: Central Mexico

1816 November 13. Maximum intensity 5 at Zapotlan (Cuidad Guzman). Strong shaking for eight days. The sea retreated more than 600 paces, inundating the saltworks of San Pantaleon (reference #13024)

14 November 1816: The San Pantaleon earthquake and tsunami. On 14 November, the priest Geronimo Arzac (AHAG, 1816a) was heading to Tecoman and mentioned the occurrence of several earthquakes, the strongest of which occurred on 13 November at 18:00 hr, another one on 14 November at 1:00 hr, and a third one at 10:00 hr (local time). These earthquakes caused significant damage in Colima and Tecoman and also damaged some churches and public buildings in Guadalajara (Biblioteca Publica del Estado de Jalisco [BPEJ], 1816), Tecolotlan, Suchitlan, Ayotitlan (AHAG, 1816b), Zapotlan El Grande (Vizcaino, 1986), and Colima (Río de la Loza, 1863). Figure 4c shows a facsimile of the handwritten report by priest Jose Antonio Enriquez del Castillo (Archivo de la Parroquia de Tecoman [APT], 1817) who was an eyewitness and described a tsunami event on “November 13th of 1816 two o’clock in the morning” when “the sea…” incursion reached 60 codos high (25 m); “…the water receded…” causing destruction of the salt beds, that is, harvest infrastructure (an ancient method of salt extraction). The 1816 and 1818 events occurred in the middle of the Independence War, and this might explain the relative scarcity of information. Tsunami generation: earthquake / landslide?. The San Pantaleon tsunami of 1816 was presumably produced by a medium-sized earthquake. The 1816 earthquake and tsunami description indicates that the saltworks were flooded with a wave 25 m in height (APT, 1817). (reference #13627)