Earthquake with 6.1 magnitude hits offshore Cuba, shaking buildings in Havana

Souce: THE AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

A 6.1 mag­ni­tude earth­quake struck near west­ern Cu­ba on Mon­day, shak­ing build­ings in Ha­vana and be­yond.

No in­juries or dam­age were im­me­di­ate­ly re­port­ed.

The quake struck at a depth of 6 miles (10 kilo­me­ters) in wa­ters just west of the cap­i­tal, ac­cord­ing to the U.S. Ge­o­log­i­cal Sur­vey.

Flavia Pupo, a man­ag­er at the Pinar del Río ho­tel, in Pinar del Rio, de­scribed how the build­ing shook and caused some fear.

“Every­one here is OK,” she said by tele­phone. “The peo­ple on the street are a lit­tle bit scared.”

The lat­est earth­quake was felt as far away as Flori­da. The Na­tion­al Weath­er Ser­vice in Mi­a­mi said in a tweet that it re­ceived sev­er­al re­ports of shak­ing in the south­west­ern part of the state.

Mi­a­mi-Dade Coun­ty of­fi­cials an­nounced that they were evac­u­at­ing sev­er­al build­ings out of an abun­dance of cau­tion, in­clud­ing the coun­ty’s main gov­ern­ment of­fice build­ing, a 28-sto­ry high rise in down­town Mi­a­mi.

Of­fi­cials al­so tem­porar­i­ly sus­pend­ed ser­vice for two el­e­vat­ed com­muter train ser­vices that run through down­town. No in­juries or ma­jor prop­er­ty dam­age have been re­port­ed.

The Ori­ente fault zone is lo­cat­ed just off Cu­ba’s south­east coast and has un­leashed dam­ag­ing earth­quakes in re­cent cen­turies, in­clud­ing a 7.7 mag­ni­tude quake in Jan­u­ary 2020 in open wa­ters that caused dam­age in Cu­ba and the Cay­man Is­lands. —HA­VANA (AP)