He said 73-year-old Nelson Martínez was disabled and that he and his father cared for him.Įight people were injured in Ponce, officials said. Teacher Rey González told The Associated Press that his uncle was killed when a wall collapsed on him at the home they shared in the city of Ponce. The risk of a magnitude 7 quake or bigger is extremely low, USGS said.
The USGS said that while it’s virtually certain there will be many aftershocks in the next week, the chance of a magnitude 6 quake - similar to Tuesday’s - or stronger is around 22 percent. Residents can expect aftershocks for some weeks, but they will peter out in both size and frequency and eventually end, he said. The unusual location of Tuesday’s quake means scientists don’t have a detailed historical record to draw upon in trying to assess future activity, Bellini said. As the plates move, they build up stress, eventually causing an earthquake. The North American plate is being driven below the Caribbean plate in some parts of the area, and the two plates are also rubbing each other sideways, Bellini said. The Caribbean islands are prone to quakes because they’re at a spot where two tectonic plates meet in a complex dance. 31, more than 950 quakes and aftershocks have been recorded in the area of Tuesday night’s event, most too weak to be felt, according to USGS. Since 1950, there have now been five quakes of magnitude 6.0 or larger near Puerto Rico, and all the others have been far to the north, he said.īut since Dec. Most large quakes in the area happen some 60 to 80 miles off Puerto Rico’s north coast, he said. Puerto Rico is in an area prone to earthquakes, but Tuesday’s quake was unusual because it struck just off the southern coast, said John Bellini, a geophysicist with the U.S. Tuesday’s quake was the strongest to hit Puerto Rico since October 1918, when a magnitude 7.3 quake struck near the island’s northwest coast, unleashing a tsunami and killing 116 people. “We’re talking about an event that Puerto Rico hasn’t experienced in 102 years and we’re talking about something that we can’t predict,” she said. She said some 300,000 households remained without running water late Tuesday, and several hundred people were in shelters. Puerto Rico’s governor, Wanda Vásquez, declared a state of emergency and activated the territory’s National Guard.
#Seismac activity generator#
Puerto Rico’s main airport was operating normally, using generator power. Authorities said two plants suffered light damage and they expected power to be restored later Tuesday. The morning quake cut electricity to the island as power plants shut down to protect themselves. Preparing to start a 12-hour shift to protect it from looters was María Mercedes Alcázar, a 63-year-old private security guard who said she didn’t fear earthquakes, but her children, aged 37 and 42, were jittery.Ī friend who dropped Alcázar off at the school, 49-year-old construction worker Mario Cruz, said he remains terrified. Most of the damage occurred in Guánica, where a three-story school collapsed. She and her family soon left for the mountain town of Hormigueros, where Colberg’s grandmother lives. “We need to go, because if not we could end up falling down there,” Colberg said as she gestured to the ground floor from the second story of her home. “What do I do with this?” asked her 9-year-old son, holding a tiny pink bucket with a pet fish that survived the earthquake.
#Seismac activity cracked#
He said 73-year-old Nelson Martinez was disabled and that he and his father cared for him.Alexandra Colberg, 27, moved out of her deeply cracked home in the nearby town of Guánica with her husband and four children, packing their mattresses, a refrigerator, a set of curtains and their clothes into two pickup trucks. Teacher Rey Gonzalez told The Associated Press that his uncle was killed when a wall collapsed on him at the home they shared in Ponce.
She said she had not spoken to President Donald Trump by late morning. She said some 300,000 households remained without running water by late Tuesday afternoon, and several hundred people were in shelters in affected municipalities. Puerto Rico’s governor, Wanda Vasquez, declared a state of emergency and activated the territory’s National Guard. “I’ve never been so scared in my life,” said Nelson Rivera, a 70-year-old resident who fled his home in the city of Ponce, near the epicenter of the quake. The 6.4-magnitude quake cut power to the island as power plants shut down to protect themselves.
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