Mexico¹, officially named the United Mexican States, is a 1.952.500 square kilometres country² bordered by the United States of America to the north, Belize and Guatemala to the South East, the Gulf of Mexico, including the Bay of Campeche and the Caribbean Sea to the East, and the Pacific Ocean to the South and West³. In the West, Baja California is a 1.287 km peninsula that forms the Gulf of California. Being about one-fifth the size of the United States, Mexico is an immense, high plateau, open to the north, surrounded by mountain chains on the East and West. Beyond the mountains, lowlands sprawl towards the oceans. The climate of the country varies with the altitude, so that there are hot, temperate and cool regions—tierra caliente (up to1.220 m), tierra templada (1.220–1.830 m) and tierra fria (above 1.830 m)⁴ . Periodically, Mexico experiences several natural hazards, such as the tsunamis storms along the Pacific coast, active volcanoes and destructive earthquakes in the central and southern part of the country, and hurricanes on the Pacific, Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean coasts.⁵