A powerful 7.6-magnitude earthquake rocked Costa Rica on Wednesday, rattling buildings, cutting power in areas of the capital and triggering a tsunami warning.
The USGS said the 8:42 a.m. (10:42 a.m. EDT; 1442 GMT) quake struck about 38 miles (60 kilometers) from the town of Liberia. It was centered about 25 miles (41 kilometers) below the surface. The magnitude initially was estimated at 7.9.
In the town of Hojancha a few miles (kilometers) 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.”
It has been reported that the phones and electricity is gone and water flowed out of the pools during the earthquake, but the Red Cross said that there is no casualties had been reported so far.
“It was terrible. I was on the third floor, I had never felt anything like it,” said Stephanie Gonzalez, a 25-year-old masters student in the capital.
“People are very frightened and staying in their homes,” said Eliecer Gonzalez, commercial director of a local newspaper in the Guanacaste region on Costa Rica’s Pacific Coast. “We are very isolated and have no power.”
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center issued a warning for Pacific coastlines of Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Panama. It had earlier warned of tsunamis for as far afield as Mexico and Peru.
It was the biggest earthquake in Costa Rica since a 7.6 quake in 1991 left 47 dead. More recently, 40 people died in a 6.1 magnitude quake in January 2009.
(Reporting By Isabella Cota, Mike McDonald and Liz Diaz)
