Earthquake near Cuba, Jamaica felt in Orlando
A powerful 7.7 magnitude earthquake that struck the Caribbean on Tuesday shook buildings about 500 miles away in Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach, according to reports received by the U.S. Geological Survey.
Several South Florida buildings were evacuated as a precaution, according to city of Miami and MiamiDade County officials. No injuries or road closures have been reported.
The earthquake hit the Caribbean at 2:10 p.m. local time. By 3:30 p.m. on Brickell Avenue between 13th and 6th streets, there were crowds of men and women in office attire pooled on the sidewalks. Many of them were staring into the sky at the towering buildings they worked in. Others were shooting photographs. Among them were members of the Miami Dade Police Department and Fire Rescue officials.
Florida rarely feels such tremors because it’s not near any plate boundaries, unlike, say, California.
There were two major reasons this one was felt in Florida, said Falk Amelung, professor of marine geology and geophysics at the University of Miami. First, it was strong. Second, it took place at a point on the Caribbean plate, which follows roughly the shape of the Caribbean Sea, that comes closest to Florida.
Despite its size and proximity, it posed no danger in Florida, said Julie Dutton, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey.
The USGS says the earthquake struck south of Cuba and northwest of Jamaica, and intensity maps showed magnitude three tremors at least as far north as the Bahamas. It was centered 86 miles northwest of Montego Bay, Jamaica, and 87 miles west-southwest of Niquero, Cuba. The epicenter was a relatively shallow six miles beneath the surface.
Shaking from the earthquake was reported as far north as Orlando, including at the University of Central Florida’s Spectrum Stadium.
The stadium has the nickname the “Bounce House” for the way it moves when fans jump to the Zombie Nation song “Kernkraft 400” during games, a Knights tradition.
Eric DeSalvo, an assistant athletics director at UCF
Commissioner Brenda Carey explained that she agreed to consider the land swap in order to “move to the next step.”
“I think that this is how we start the conversation,” she said before making a motion to accept the settlement proposal. “Until we know what the [development] proposal is and how it looks, we really don’t if it’s of value or not. What is most important to me and my colleagues on this board is protecting the rural boundary. And if this is an opportunity for us to do that – which we don’t know yet, because we haven’t seen the end [development]submittal – then I think we want to be able to consider it. And in order to do that, we have to move to the next step.”
But Geneva resident Nancy Harmon blasted commissioners for agreeing to the proposal from River Cross Land Co.
“There are many of us who are not in favor of swapping the land because it sets a precedent,” she said. “Now the rural boundary is negotiable. And anybody who wants to challenge the rural boundary will go to the county and say buy me out and that will require the county to come up with the funds to buy out these people or dissolve the rural boundary. That’s what’s concerning to me more than anything else. That this sets the precedence that we are willing to give away land in order to maintain [the rural boundary].”
County attorney Bryant Applegate said that either the county or River Cross Land Co. could terminate the agreement at any time.
Any development plans “will go through the public hearing process,” Applegate said. “And it may not even get to that point.”
It’s the second time this month that commissioners considered a settlement offer involving a similar swap. The previous settlement offer would have largely hold the county responsible for all mitigation and conservation costs on the property
Athletics’ brand advancement office, said he was sitting in his office on the sixth floor of Spectrum Stadium when he started to feel the building sway.
When he looked up, he said he saw a bar above his desk holding team banners swinging. He went outside his office, where a folded-up ping-pong table in the hallway was moving back and forth.
“It was nothing crazy ... but you could definitely feel it,” he said. “If was noticeable if you were sitting down or looking at stuff — you could see it moving.”
DeSalvo said the swaying almost felt like the stadium bouncing when fans jump during games. east of the river.
Under the new settlement offer, River Cross would be responsible for those costs.
Commissioner Jay Zembower said if the trade goes through, it’s likely Seminole will turn the larger property into a public wilderness area that the public can enjoy.
The property also will act as a rural buffer from future development in Orange County. The county’s current property sits in a fastgrowing urban area near the University of Central Florida.
“The swap would gives us the taxpayers three times more land and it protects the [rural boundary’s] southern border from any development encroachment,” Zembower said. “Oviedo and UCF are booming areas where nearly every inch has been developed. If development is going to occur,it’s best to occur in the urban area.”
The former ranchland sits within the county’s rural boundary and according to Seminole’s land development regulations, water and sewer services cannot be extended into that rural area as a way of preventing widespread and high-density residential and commercial growth.
The county’s Econ River Wilderness Area west of the river sits within Seminole’s urban services area and has access to water and sewer connections. That makes the smaller county-owned property that Dorworth’s firm would receive much more suitable for commercial and residential development and thereby more valuable.
“I do not believe that this is an even one-for-one swap of our property to their property,” Constantine said. “One [property] is potentially more developable than the other…. And this is not a done deal. I’m going to be looking at what additional considerations are going to be made for the county.”