CANGREJAL, Costa Rica – A powerful, magnitude-7.6 earthquake
shook Costa Rica
and a wide swath of Central America on Wednesday,
collapsing some houses,
blocking highways and causing panic
and at least one death from a heart attack.
Costa Rica President Laura Chinchilla announced there were
no reports of major
damage and called for calm.
At the epicenter, the beach town of Cangrejal,
Jairo Zuniga, 27,
said everything in his house fell when the quake hit at 8:42 a.m. (10:42 a.m. EDT).
"It was incredibly strong. I've felt earthquakes,
but this one was 'wow,'
he said.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake was centered
about 38 miles from the
town of Liberia and 87 miles
west of the
capital, San Jose,
where frightened people ran into the streets.
The magnitude initially was estimated at 7.9,
but was quickly downgraded. Local
residents said
it shook for about 30 seconds and was felt
as far away as
neighboring Panama and Nicaragua,
where school was canceled in some areas.
Officials initially warned of a possible tsunami,
and local police supervisor
Jose Angel Gomez said
about 5,000 people — 80 percent of the population —
had
been evacuated from coastal towns
in the Samara district west of the quake's
epicenter.
But by mid-day they were allowed to return.
Panama
also briefly called for people to evacuate beach areas.
In Costa Rica, one man died
of a heart attack caused by fright,
said Carlos Miranda, a Red Cross worker in
the city of Liberia.
Douglas Salgado, a geographer with Costa
Rica's
National Commission of Risk Prevention and
Emergency Attention, said officials
a landslide
hit the main highway that connects the capital
of San
Jose to the Pacific coast city of Puntarenas,
and hotels and other structures
suffered cracks in walls
and saw items knocked off shelves.
Rosa Pichardo, 45, who lives in Samara, was walking
on the beach with her
family when the quake hit.
"When we felt the earthquake, we held onto
each other because we kept
falling," Pichardo said.
"I've never felt anything like this. We just
couldn't stay standing.
My feet gave out under me. It was terrible, terrible."
In the town of Hojancha
a few miles from the epicenter,
city official Kenia Campos said the quake
knocked down some houses and landslides blocked several roads.
"So far, we don't have victims," she said.
"People were really
scared ... We have had
moderate quakes but an earthquake (this strong)
hadn't
happened in more than 50 years."
Michelle Landwer, owner of the Belvedere Hotel in Samara,
north of the
epicenter, said she was having breakfast
with about 10 people when the
earthquake struck.
"The whole building was moving,
I couldn't even walk," Landwer said.
"Here in my building there was no real damage.
Everything was falling,
like glasses and everything."
In the coastal town of Nosara,
roughly 20 miles southwest
of the epicenter, trees shook violently and light
posts swayed.
Teachers chased primary school students outside as the quake hit.
Roads cracked and power lines fell to the ground.
Wednesday's quake occurred in a seismically active zone
where the Pacific
tectonic plate is diving beneath Central America.
"All along the Pacific coast of Central America,
you can expect fairly big earthquakes,
" said seismologist Daniel McNamara
of the U.S. Geological Survey.
The quake was fairly deep — 25 miles below the surface.
Deeper events tend to
be less damaging than ones closer to the surface,
but more widely felt.
"If it was a shallower event, i
t would be a significantly higher
hazard," he said.
The last deadly quake to strike Costa
Rica was in 2009,
when 40 died in a
magnitude-6.1 temblor.
The last similar-sized quake to hit the country was in
1991
when 47 people were killed in the Limon-Pandora area.
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