A powerful seismic shock hit the Caribbean Sea near Jamaica and Cuba raising alerts for potential tsunamis.
The earthquake struck on Tuesday, January 28, 2020; the fault rupture associated with this eventhappened along the Septentrional-Orient fault zone (SOFZ), a group of active strike-slip faults. Its epicenter was located around 125 kilometers northwest of Lucea, a town in western Jamaica at a depth of 10 kilometers.
Authorities quickly warned people about a tsunami threat. About 30 minutes after the event, a small tsunami wave, measuring 11 centimeters, hit George Town, a coastal city in the Cayman Islands.
However, hours later, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center stated that no tsunamis associated with the seismic event were going to occur. Tsunamis mostly occur when, due to thrust fault earthquakes, the ground is lifted causing water displacements.
The temblor was felt in Jamaica, Cuba, Cayman Islands, but also in more distanced regions such as Miami, Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico and Havana.
Fortunately, no severe infrastructure damage or casualties were reported. Some cracks and sinkholes appeared in roadways across the Cayman Islands while authorities in Miami ordered buildings to be evacuated as a precautionary measure.
Despite its large magnitude, the fact that the earthquake occurred in the sea mitigated its impact. Belkis Guerrero, a resident of Santiago, eastern Cuba, describes the moment of the shock. "We were all sitting and we felt the chairs move. We heard the noise of everything moving around. It felt very strong but it doesn’t look like anything happened," Guerrero stated.
The huge tremblor was followed by a series of aftershocks with the larger one being M 6.1. Those events are a natural consequence of the bigger shock and, according to scientists, their pattern is not concerning.
The earthquake was the strongest to occur in the particular region since a M 8.1 event hit near the Dominican Republic back in 1946.
The Caribbean has been recently struck by a series of earthquakes. At the beginning of 2020, numerous temblors hit Puerto Rico during a 10-day period and caused landscape changes in the island's terrain.
Sources: USAtoday, USGS, CNN, Accuweather
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