A New Zealand woman travelling through Panama says the earthquake was unlike anything she had ever experienced back home.<\/p>\n
The magnitude 7.7 earthquake occurred near Pitaloza Arriba at 6.56am on Saturday, New Zealand time.<\/p>\n
Aftershocks measuring up to magnitude 5.8 followed soon after.<\/p>\n
The initial quake had a depth of 12.6 kilometres, according to the United States Geological Survey, which said the disaster was likely widespread.<\/p>\n
The National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) and GNS Science initially said it was assessing whether the quake had created a tsunami that could affect New Zealand.<\/p>\n
“Based on current information, the initial assessment is that the earthquake is unlikely to have caused a tsunami that will affect New Zealand,” it said about half an hour later.<\/p>\n
The United States Geological Survey said approximately 4.6 million people experienced moderate to severe shaking.<\/p>\n
One of those was Sirpa Alal\u00e4\u00e4kk\u00f6l\u00e4, who was travelling through Chitr\u00e9 on her way to Panama City at the time the quake struck.<\/p>\n
Alal\u00e4\u00e4kk\u00f6l\u00e4, based in the Marlborough Sounds, told RNZ that people around her appeared shaken, with some crying.<\/p>\n
“Honestly, I did not know that there are earthquakes here,” Alal\u00e4\u00e4kk\u00f6l\u00e4 said.<\/p>\n
While Alal\u00e4\u00e4kk\u00f6l\u00e4 had experienced the magnitude 7.8 earthquake in Kaik\u014dura when she lived in Nelson in 2016, she said this earthquake felt “a lot bigger”.<\/p>\n
“You could feel the earth moving, like, in a way that I’ve never felt in New Zealand.<\/p>\n
“Nothing really came down, but it was just really, really strong swaying off the ground.”<\/p>\n
While Alal\u00e4\u00e4kk\u00f6l\u00e4 was concerned that Tocumen International Airport in Panama City would still be closed before her flight to Mexico on Sunday, the airport had reopened after a temporary safety closure and evacuation.<\/p>\n
There were 51 New Zealanders registered with safetravel.govt.nz as being in Panama. Officials said they had not received any requests for assistance.<\/p>\n
The Ford Football Ferns were in Panama during the earthquake and set to play the Panama team on Sunday.<\/p>\n
New Zealand Football confirmed in a statement that all members of the squad were safe and accounted for.<\/p>\n
“New Zealand Football is in contact with local authorities, team management and match organisers and will continue to monitor the situation.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A New Zealand woman travelling through Panama says the earthquake was unlike anything she had ever experienced back…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":922565,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[64,63,75,128],"class_list":["post-922564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/922564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=922564"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/922564\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/922565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=922564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=922564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=922564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}