A magnitude 7.7 earthquake shakes Panama, prompting evacuations

A pow­er­ful mag­ni­tude 7.7 earth­quake struck Pana­ma on Fri­day morn­ing, shak­ing build­ings in the cap­i­tal, prompt­ing evac­u­a­tions and send­ing tremors as far as neigh­bor­ing Colom­bia.

The quake was cen­tered about 10 kilo­me­ters (6 miles) south­west of the re­mote com­mu­ni­ty of Pitaloza Ar­ri­ba, in the cen­tral province of Her­rera, the U.S. Ge­o­log­i­cal Sur­vey said. It struck at a depth of 10 kilo­me­ters (6 miles). US­GS ini­tial­ly re­port­ed the quake as mag­ni­tude 8, then re­vised it to 7.6 and lat­er to 7.7.

Vis­i­bly shak­en res­i­dents of Pana­ma City gath­ered out­side as they wait­ed for news of the quake’s im­pact on Fri­day. Af­ter­shocks fol­lowed, with the US­GS record­ing two mea­sur­ing 5.8 and 5.5.

“We felt it very strong­ly. It knocked things over in the kitchen, but we’re okay, though we’re very scared,” Rosendo Domínguez, 60, who is from Her­rera province, where the earth­quake struck, told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press by phone. “Every­one is out­side, scared.”

The Na­tion­al Weath­er Ser­vice is­sued a tsuna­mi warn­ing Fri­day for the coasts of Pana­ma, Colom­bia, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Guatemala.

Pana­man­ian Pres­i­dent José Raúl Muli­no called for calm on Fri­day, writ­ing on X: “What hap­pened should not be used to cause alarm or dis­or­der.”

Omar Smith of the Na­tion­al Civ­il Pro­tec­tion Ser­vice said on the Telemetro Re­por­ta news chan­nel that dam­age was con­cen­trat­ed in the cen­tral provinces of Ve­r­aguas, Her­rera and Los San­tos. He said there were no re­ports of dam­age in the cap­i­tal, which is known for its hun­dreds of sky­scrap­ers.

Video aired by lo­cal news out­lets showed a Catholic cathe­dral col­laps­ing and part of a ho­tel’s fa­cade falling on­to a car in the city of Penonomé, in the cen­tral province of Co­clé. No ca­su­al­ties were im­me­di­ate­ly re­port­ed.

Pana­ma lies along the “Ring of Fire,” a 40,000-kilo­me­ter (25,000-mile) arc of vol­ca­noes and fault lines around the Pa­cif­ic Basin, where most of the world’s earth­quakes oc­cur.

Pana­ma’s Civ­il Pro­tec­tion said it was in­ves­ti­gat­ing pos­si­ble dam­age in re­gions near the epi­cen­ter. —PANA­MA CITY (AP)

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Sto­ry by JUAN ZAMORA­NO and AL­MA SOLÍS | As­so­ci­at­ed Press