Powerful quake hits Panama, damages homes; canal operations normal

A 7.7 magnitude earthquake struck near the southern coast of Panama on Friday ‌at a 12.6-km (7.8 miles) depth, according to the US Geological Survey, damaging some buildings but without affecting the critical Panama Canal trade waterway. In Panama, where earthquakes of this magnitude are rare, television images showed elderly residents reduced to tears in the streets as a series of weaker aftershocks ‌rattled the country.

“We’re scared. It’s just the two of us old folks here. The house has cracked, and we’re afraid it ‌could fall on us,” said Ricardo Brown, 74, speaking by phone from the Las Minas area in Herrera province in southern Panama, where he noted the quake damaged a number of homes. The quake's epicenter was close to the rural community of La Pitaloza in a sparsely populated area of Herrera, near the Pacific coastline. Shaking ⁠was also ​felt as far as San ⁠Jose, the capital of neighboring Costa Rica, according to a Reuters witness.

Omar Smith, who heads Panama's civil protection agency, told local outlet Telemetro Reporta that impacts had been ⁠reported in Chitre, the capital of Herrera, and along the coast in Los Santos province. Videos shared by newspaper La Prensa showed the tower of a historic ​building had collapsed along with several balconies of a residential building in Penonome, a city about halfway between the epicenter ⁠and Panama City.

In the capital, the service on two lines of the Panama City Metro was temporarily suspended for safety reasons, the operator said. Nationwide, Panama's ministry of ⁠education ​ordered the closure of schools. The impact prompted the US Tsunami Warning System to warn that hazardous tsunami waves were possible along parts of the coasts of Panama, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Peru, Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador and Mexico within the next three hours. The ⁠system also said there was a tsunami threat to Hawaii, while Chile's navy also issued a tsunami alert.

Panama was due to ⁠hold a national evacuation drill ⁠on Monday of next week to test the country's emergency response capabilities against earthquakes.