PANAMA CITY, October 10 — A magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck southern Panama on Friday, damaging buildings and prompting a regional tsunami warning, in the most powerful tremor to hit the Central American country in recent memory.
The quake struck at about 15:00 local time (18:00 GMT) with a shallow depth of roughly 12 km, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, which placed the epicentre near the small town of Pitaloza Arriba in south-central Panama. Shallow quakes tend to inflict far greater damage at the surface than deeper ones.
The USGS estimated that about 4.6 million people felt moderate to severe shaking, and said the disaster’s effects were “likely to be widespread.” Footage circulated online, some of it unverified, appeared to show collapsed structures in the towns of Penonomé and Soná. Panama City, about 200 km away, saw thousands evacuated from buildings, and the country’s largest international airport was temporarily closed. The U.S. Tsunami Warning System said the quake could trigger tsunamis in neighbouring Colombia, Costa Rica, Chile and Mexico.
A series of aftershocks followed, several above magnitude 5, and authorities issued a tsunami advisory for coastal areas. No casualty figures had been confirmed by late Friday, though Chinese diplomatic sources said no personnel from Chinese-invested institutions or local overseas Chinese communities were reported injured.
The timing was unwelcome: Panama had been scheduled to hold a national earthquake evacuation drill in just three days. The country sits near the boundary of the Cocos and Caribbean tectonic plates, and devastating earthquakes struck neighbouring Colombia and Venezuela earlier this year.
For a nation whose canal is the linchpin of global maritime trade, the immediate question is not only humanitarian but logistical. Engineers and officials will now assess damage to roads, ports and the canal’s supporting infrastructure — a reminder that in a seismically active isthmus, resilience is measured not by the rarity of the event but by the speed of recovery.