Panama Rattled by Powerful Earthquakes, Residents Sleep on Streets

Unnerved residents of rural Panama awoke Saturday on the streets as the aftershocks of two powerful earthquakes that roiled the country shook their communities for hours. The 7.7- and 6.6-magnitude earthquakes toppled buildings near the epicenter and prompted evacuations across the Central American country.

Seismologists at the University of Panama recorded dozens of aftershocks, including ones measuring magnitude 5.8, 5.5 and 5.2. The earlier quake, felt as far away as neighboring Colombia, was centered about 10 kilometers (6 miles) southwest of the remote community of Pitaloza Arriba, in the central province of Herrera, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. It struck at a depth of 10 kilometers (6 miles).

Panamanian authorities had not attributed any deaths to the earthquakes. In La Villa de Los Santos, a colonial-era community about 40 miles (64 kilometers) northeast of the epicenter, homes and a historical Catholic church collapsed. People who spent the night on the streets were waiting for government guidance.

"We’ve been here since 1 p.m. yesterday; we haven’t moved," said Tony Jiménez, whose home partially collapsed, while sitting with relatives under a tent. "It was a terrible thing. I can tell you with absolute certainty that in my 90 years, I had never experienced anything like it. It was intense—truly intense."

Images of crumbling buildings and deep fissures slicing through roads added to fears across a region battered by a series of devastating earthquakes in recent months. Two back-to-back 7.2 and 7.5 magnitude earthquakes roiled Venezuela’s La Guaira state in June, killing more than 6,500 people and leaving 17,000 homeless. In August, a 7.4 magnitude earthquake in Colombia killed at least 289 people.

The notably lower toll in nearby Panama may have been due to the country's strict building codes, especially governing construction of skyscrapers in the capital, said Carlos Valdés, head of the Seismology Department at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

Omar Smith of the National Civil Protection Service said that damage was concentrated in the central provinces of Veraguas, Herrera and Los Santos, with no reports of damage in Panama City. Smith said several injuries have been reported, including one person struck by debris from a partially collapsed structure in the city of Penonomé. He confirmed a partial collapse and cracks at the cathedral in the main square, as well as damage to the governor’s office building and the Dos Continentes hotel.

The Church of San Atanasio in La Villa de Los Santos, declared a National Historic Heritage Site in 1938, collapsed. Large fissures ran along roadways in Veraguas province.

Tocumen International Airport in Panama City temporarily suspended operations after the first quake but reopened Friday afternoon. The Panama Canal Authority reported that operations were continuing normally along the global trade route, with specialized technical teams inspecting facilities.

The last major earthquake to cause widespread damage in Panama struck in 1991. A magnitude 7.4 quake, centered in nearby Costa Rica, killed 23 people, injured 559 and left thousands of people homeless in the border Bocas del Toro region.

Earthquakes are common in Panama, particularly along its border with Costa Rica and its Pacific coast, due to the interaction of tectonic plates. Panama lies along the “Ring of Fire,” an arc of volcanoes and fault lines around the Pacific Basin where most of the world’s earthquakes occur.