HAVANA: A 6.1 magnitude earthquake struck near western Cuba on Monday, shaking buildings in Havana and beyond.
No injuries or damage were immediately reported.
The quake struck at a depth of 6 miles (10 kilometers) in waters just west of the capital, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
Flavia Pupo, a manager at the Pinar del Rio hotel in western Cuba described how the building shook and caused some fear.
“Everyone here is OK,” she said by telephone. “The people on the street are a little bit scared.”
The latest earthquake was felt as far away as Florida. The National Weather Service in Miami said in a tweet that it received several reports of shaking in the southwestern part of the state. A flood of social media posts Monday afternoon indicated that people felt shaking even north of Orlando.
Maria Moncayo, who works at a law office in downtown Fort Lauderdale, said she had been quietly working at her desk when she started to feel a vibrating sensation. She compared it to someone doing construction in another part of the building, and it lasted about a minute or so.
“I have a little pendant dangling in my desk, and it was moving,” Moncayo said. “That’s why I realized that it’s actually not me or my chair or anything.”
Moncayo said she had experienced several earthquakes while living in Ecuador, including a 7.8 magnitude earthquake that left hundreds dead in 2016. But she hadn’t experienced one since moving to Florida seven years ago.
“Since I moved here, it kind of left my mind, but when I felt my desk moving, I thought it was going to be like Ecuador,” Moncayo said. “It kind of gave me flashbacks, but then I realized that it’s not bad, it’s just a little one.”
Miami-Dade County officials announced that they were evacuating several buildings out of an abundance of caution, including the county’s main government office building, a 28-story high rise in downtown Miami.
Officials also temporarily suspended service for two elevated commuter train services that run through downtown. No injuries or major property damage have been reported.
William Barnhart, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey, described Monday’s earthquake as extremely rare. It’s the largest earthquake ever recorded in the Gulf of Mexico with modern instruments, which date back to the 1950s.
“It’s one of only five or six earthquakes of magnitude 5 or greater that we’re aware of in the entire Gulf.”
No tsunami was created by this earthquake. Barnhart pointed out that the destructive ocean waves created by earthquakes and other underwater disturbances are more common in the Pacific Ocean, but they can occur in the Atlantic. Western Cuba might experience some strong aftershocks, but they’re unlikely to be felt in Florida, Barnhart said.
“There’s always a very, very small chance that this could be followed by a larger earthquake and people would feel that,” Barnhart said. “But in Florida, people shouldn’t expect to feel very much shaking, if any shaking at all, from any aftershocks that happen.”
The Oriente fault zone is located just off Cuba’s southeast coast and has unleashed damaging earthquakes in recent centuries, including a 7.7 magnitude quake in January 2020 in open waters that caused damage in Cuba and the Cayman Islands.
