HAVANA\/CANCUN, June 8 (Reuters) – A historically strong earthquake struck off Cuba’s northwest coast on Monday, according to official reports, shaking parts of Cuba, Mexico and \u200cFlorida that are typically not prone to quakes.<\/p>\n
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) measured \u200cthe quake at a magnitude 6.1 at a shallow depth of 26 km (16 miles) and its epicenter 104 km \u200bwest-northwest of Mantua, Cuba, about two to four hours by car from the capital Havana.<\/p>\n
Monday’s earthquake was unusual for this area of the Caribbean, said Paul Earle, a seismologist at the USGS, noting that the quake occurred within a tectonic plate, where earthquakes are usually \u200cmore scattered and less frequent \u2060than when they occur along plate boundaries.<\/p>\n
An earthquake this strong had not hit within 322 km (200 miles) of Monday’s quake since 1880, when \u2060a 6.0 temblor hit near San Cristobal, Cuba, said Earle.<\/p>\n
Authorities have not yet reported any major damage or casualties, but the quake spiked concern in Cuba, where decades of economic \u200bcrisis have \u200bleft buildings in severe disrepair. Ongoing widespread blackouts \u200bacross the region have made communications \u200cdifficult.<\/p>\n
“It felt strong. I had never felt anything like that,” said Yusmila Hernandez, 44, at her home in Pinar del Rio, in western Cuba.<\/p>\n
“People ran outside, everyone scared. I can\u2019t even explain it. It felt like no earthquake has ever felt here before,” Hernandez said.<\/p>\n
USGS reported that shaking was also felt in Florida. In Mexico, the quake \u200cwas felt in the tourist hubs of Cancun, Playa del \u200bCarmen and Tulum on the country’s Yucatan peninsula. \u200bResidents and workers in Cancun’s city \u200bcenter, unaccustomed to strong quakes, evacuated buildings.<\/p>\n
Emergency protocols were activated in \u200cMexico’s Yucatan and Quintana Roo states, but \u200bthere were not yet \u200breports of damage, the state’s governors both said on social media.<\/p>\n
No tsunami warning or watch was issued after the earthquake, according to the U.S. National Weather \u200bService.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Annet Rios, Ayose \u200cNaranjo and Dave Sherwood in Havana, Cuba; Paola Chiomante in Cancun, Mexico, and \u200bBrendan O’Boyle and Cassandra Garrison in Mexico City; Writing by Brendan O’Boyle; \u200bEditing by Chris Reese and Nick Zieminski)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HAVANA\/CANCUN, June 8 (Reuters) – A historically strong earthquake struck off Cuba’s northwest coast on Monday, according to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":300553,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1016,28,30,29,25986,126268,4392,126291,126290],"class_list":["post-300552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-cuba","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-havana","tag-mantua","tag-mexico","tag-paul-earle","tag-u-s-geological-survey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=300552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300552\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/300553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}