One dead, eight hurt in Puerto Rico earthquake
GUAYANILLA, Puerto Rico — Thousands of people fled their homes on Puerto Rico’s southwest coast on Tuesday after a 10-day string of earthquakes crescendoed in a powerful magnitude-6.4 quake that crushed an elderly man, injured at least eight other people and brought down buildings.
Hours after the predawn quake cut power to the entire U.S. territory, a large swath of southern Puerto Rico was shaken by smaller quakes late into Tuesday afternoon.
Seismologists said there was no way of knowing when the series of quakes would ease, prompting Puerto Ricans to stay with friends or family or even sleep outdoors far from the coast, fearful of collapsing buildings or a tsunami.
“I’m stringing up my hammock,” said Miguel Santana, a 38-year-old resident of the southwest coastal town of Guayanilla.
Alexandra Colberg, 27, moved out of her deeply cracked home in the nearby town of Guanica with her husband and four children, packing their mattresses, a refrigerator, a set of curtains and their clothes into two pickup trucks. “What do I do with this?” asked her nine-year-old son, holding a tiny pink bucket with a pet fish that survived the earthquake.
“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 storey of her home. She and her family soon left for the mountain town of Hormigueros, where Colberg’s grandmother lives.
Most of the damage occurred in Guanica, where a three-storey school collapsed. Preparing to start a 12-hour shift to protect it from looters was Maria Mercedes Alcazar, a 63-year-old private security guard who said she didn’t fear earthquakes, but her children, aged 37 and 42, were jittery. A friend who dropped Alcazar off at the school, 49-yearold construction worker Mario Cruz, said he was terrified.
“I’m not right, emotionally,” he said. “I don’t want to feel another one.”
The morning quake cut electricity to the island as power plants shut down to protect themselves. Authorities said two plants suffered light damage and they expected power to be restored later Tuesday. Puerto Rico’s main airport was operating normally, using generator power.
Puerto Rico’s governor, Wanda Vasquez, declared a state of emergency and activated the territory’s National Guard. She said about 300,000 households remained without running water late Tuesday, and several hundred people were in shelters.
“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.
Tuesday’s quake was the strongest to hit Puerto Rico since October 1918, when a magnitude7.3 quake struck near the island’s northwest coast, unleashing a tsunami and killing 116 people.
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. Geological Survey in Golden, Colorado.
Most large quakes in the area happen off Puerto Rico’s north coast, he said. Since 1950, there have been five quakes of magnitude-6.0 or larger near Puerto Rico, and all the others have been far to the north, he said.
But since Dec. 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 the Survey.
The Caribbean islands are prone to quakes because they’re at a spot where two tectonic plates meet in a complex dance. 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. As the plates move, they build up stress, eventually causing an earthquake.
Teacher Rey Gonzalez said his uncle was killed when a wall collapsed on him at the home they shared in the city of Ponce. He said 73-year-old Nelson Martinez was disabled and that he and his father cared for him.
Eight people were injured in Ponce, officials said.
Hundreds of people sat in the streets of the city, some cooking food on barbecue grills, afraid to return home for fear of structural damage and aftershocks.