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<\/p>\nTwo powerful 7.7 and 6.6 magnitude earthquakes and a series of aftershocks roiled southern Panama, collapsing buildings near the epicentre and prompting evacuations across the country.<\/p>\n
The earlier quake, felt as far away as neighboring Colombia, was centred about 10 kilometres southwest of the remote community of Pitaloza Arriba, in the central province of Herrera, the USGS said. It struck at a depth of 10 kilometres.<\/p>\n
The USGS initially reported the first quake as magnitude 8, then revised it to 7.6 and later to 7.7.<\/p>\n
Visibly shaken residents of Panama City, the capital, gathered outside as they waited for news of the quake\u2019s impact.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe felt it very strongly. It knocked things over in the kitchen, but we\u2019re OK, though we\u2019re very scared,” Rosendo Dom\u00ednguez, 60, who is from Herrera province, where the earthquake struck, told The Associated Press by phone. \u201cEveryone is outside, scared.\u201d<\/p>\n
Multiple aftershocks continued to rattle Panama, including several measuring magnitude 5.8, 5.5 and 5.2. Seismologists at the University of Panama recorded more than 45 aftershocks, though many were too weak to be felt.<\/p>\n
Calls for calm and reports of collapsed buildings<\/p>\n
Despite the strength of the successive quakes, Panamanian President Jos\u00e9 Ra\u00fal Mulino said authorities had not documented anyone killed as of Friday evening (local time), though he cautioned that could change in the coming hours or days.<\/p>\n
“Nobody was ready, and no one is ever ready for this type of disaster,” Mulino said, after calling for calm earlier in the day.<\/p>\n
Images of crumbling buildings and deep fissures slicing through roads added to fears across a region battered by a series of devastating earthquakes in recent months.<\/p>\n
Two back-to-back 7.2 and 7.5 magnitude earthquakes roiled Venezuela\u2019s La Guaira state in June, killing more than 6500 people and leaving 17,000 homeless. In August, a 7.4 magnitude earthquake in Colombia killed at least 289 people.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
No deaths have been confirmed, but several have been reported injured. (Source: Associated Press)<\/p>\n
The notably lesser toll in nearby Panama may have been due to the country’s strict building codes, especially governing construction of skyscrapers in the capital, said Carlos Vald\u00e9s, head of the Seismology Department at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.<\/p>\n
Omar Smith of the National Civil Protection Service said on the Telemetro Reporta news channel that damage was concentrated in the central provinces of Veraguas, Herrera and Los Santos and there were no reports of damages in Panama City.<\/p>\n
Smith said several injuries have been reported, including one person struck by debris from a partially collapsed structure in the city of Penonom\u00e9, around 150 kilometres from the capital. He confirmed a partial collapse and cracks at the cathedral in the district\u2019s main square, as well as damage in the governor\u2019s office building and the Dos Continentes hotel.<\/p>\n
Local news outlets also reported that the Church of San Atanasio, a colonial-style Catholic church in Panama\u2019s Los Santos province, had collapsed. The church was declared a National Historic Heritage Site in 1938. Elsewhere, including in Veraguas province, large fissures ran along roadways.<\/p>\n
Tocumen International Airport in Panama City, one of the region\u2019s busiest airports with more than 20 million passengers in 2025, temporarily suspended operations after the first quake but said Friday afternoon that it was reopening.<\/p>\n
The Panama Canal Authority said operations were continuing normally along the global trade route. It said its priority was the safety of employees, vessels and crews and that specialised technical teams were inspecting facilities for possible damage.<\/p>\n
Tsunami warnings as far as Chile’s Easter Island<\/p>\n
Earthquakes are common, especially along Panama’s border with Costa Rica and its Pacific coast, because of the interaction of several tectonic plates, including the Cocos, Nazca and Caribbean plates.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
Multiple leaders across North, Central and South America have reached out to Panama and offered their support. (Source: Associated Press)<\/p>\n
Panama lies along the \u201cRing of Fire\u201d, a 40,000-kilometre arc of volcanoes and fault lines around the Pacific Basin, where most of the world\u2019s earthquakes occur.<\/p>\n
The National Weather Service lifted a tsunami warning issued shortly after the quakes for the coasts of Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Guatemala. Alerts issued by El Salvador and Chile for Easter Island were also lifted.<\/p>\n
N\u00e9stor Luque, director of the Geosciences Institute at the University of Panama, said waves between 1 and 3 metres were expected around Isla Ca\u00f1as and the southern coast of Los Santos province, but major waves weren’t expected beyond that. Seawater had already reached homes near the coast on Isla Ca\u00f1as, he said.<\/p>\n
Messages of support and offers of assistance flooded in from across the region. Mulino thanked fellow Latin American leaders for their support, saying he had spoken with the presidents of Chile, Uruguay and Guatemala, among others.<\/p>\n
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he was closely watching the situation in Panama and \u201crapidly mobilising resources and personnel to assist\u201d at the request of Panama’s government.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe United States stands with the people of Panama,\u201d Rubio wrote on X.<\/p>\n
Colombian President Abelardo de la Espriella, whose country was recently hit by earthquakes, expressed his solidarity with the Panamanian people and their government during what he called \u201cdifficult times\u201d. Acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodr\u00edguez, Costa Rican President Laura Fern\u00e1ndez Delgado, Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa and Peru’s government also offered assistance.<\/p>\n
\u201cPanama is not alone! You can count on Colombia\u2019s support and our full willingness to provide whatever assistance is needed,\u201d de la Espriella wrote on X.<\/p>\n
Janetsky reported from Mexico City, and Sol\u00eds reported from Panama City. Mar\u00eda Verza in Mexico City, Clara Preve in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Gabriela Molina in Quito, Ecuador, El\u00e9onore Hughes in Rio de Janeiro, and Becky Bohrer in Juneau, Alaska, contributed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two powerful 7.7 and 6.6 magnitude earthquakes and a series of aftershocks roiled southern Panama, collapsing buildings near…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":626512,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[28708,8215,42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-626511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-central-south-america","tag-earthquakes","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=626511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626511\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/626512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=626511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=626511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=626511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}