Panama declares emergency after powerful quake, no deaths reported

Panama declared a national state of emergency on October 10, freeing up to $100mn to repair damage from a magnitude 7.7 earthquake that struck the Central American country a day prior, injuring 27 people and damaging infrastructure in all 10 provinces, though no deaths have been reported.

Presidential Minister Juan Carlos Orillac announced the decree after an extraordinary cabinet meeting in Panama City. Housing, schools, hospitals and clinics, roads and hotels all suffered damage in the main tremor and in a magnitude 6.6 quake later on October 9, he told reporters.

Finance Minister Felipe Chapman sought to reassure markets and the public over the cost of recovery, EFE reported.

“The Panamanian economy will not stop,” Chapman said, adding that the country “has the necessary resources to deal with the damage and the most pressing needs.”

Any borrowing that proves necessary would be on concessional terms, Chapman said. He thanked the Inter-American Development Bank, CAF-Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean, the International Monetary Fund, the Central American Bank for Economic Integration and the United States for offering non-reimbursable funds.

The main shock struck shortly before 1 pm local time at a depth of 10 km, according to the US Geological Survey, which had first put its magnitude at 8.0. The University of Panama’s Institute of Geosciences measured it at 7.5, with a depth of 4 km and an epicentre 39 km northwest of the southern coastal town of Tonosi.

According to AP, more than 100 aftershocks had been recorded by October 10, three of them at magnitude 5.2 or above. An alert for a possible tsunami in the eastern Pacific has since been cancelled.

The 27 people hurt suffered minor to moderate injuries, said Malitzie Rivera, deputy director of the National Civil Protection System. Several communities were isolated by landslides and broken roads, officials said, although no one had been reported missing.

Herrera, Los Santos, Veraguas and Cocle, the provinces closest to the epicentre, bore the brunt of the damage, authorities said. All land access to Tonosi, in Los Santos, was severed, according to Health Minister Fernando Boyd.

“We are trying to figure out how to get there by air, because it’s impossible by land,” Boyd said, as quoted by AFP. Authorities later reached the town by air, and Public Works Minister Jose Luis Andrade said crews were reopening the road to allow light vehicles through.

Officials have so far inspected 426 homes with damage ranging from minor to total destruction, housing some 2,130 people, and said the government was planning repairs and new construction. Education Minister Ventura Vega said 419 of the country’s more than 3,000 schools had been affected. Classes were suspended nationwide, with Vega expected to announce on Sunday which regions would reopen.

Nine bridges, seven hotels and at least 13 churches were also damaged, civil protection officials said. Among the buildings destroyed was the Church of San Atanasio in La Villa de Los Santos, a national heritage site since 1938, which came down along with several houses in the town. Penonome’s cathedral was left partly collapsed, and the governor’s offices there were also hit.

In Veraguas province, the Sona home of former President Ricardo Martinelli was destroyed, according to photos he shared on Instagram.

Rising seas and heavy waves forced the evacuation of some 300 residents of Isla Cana, a Pacific island in Los Santos province. The quakes were also strongly felt in the capital Panama City, causing buildings to shake and sending people rushing into the streets, though no major damage has been reported there.

“We are facing a major disaster,” Mulino said on October 9 as he headed to Penonome to oversee relief efforts. In a post on X, he appealed for calm, saying the events “should not be used to generate alarm and disorder.”

Shipping through the Panama Canal was unaffected, the waterway’s authority said, while engineers checked its installations for any structural impact, AFP reported.

Air travel was disrupted across the region. According to AP, Tocumen International Airport in the capital, a regional hub that served more than 20mn passengers last year, shut for several hours after the main quake, and the Civil Aeronautics Authority said some flights were rerouted.

Washington pledged $5mn in humanitarian assistance and deployed a State Department disaster team to help with search and rescue and to assess damage from the air and on the ground. US Southern Command said two helicopters had flown about 900 kg (2,000 pounds) of food to quake-hit areas. Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala and Uruguay were among the countries offering aid.

The tremor follows a string of deadly quakes in the region this year. More than 6,500 people died in June when two earthquakes, of magnitude 7.2 and 7.5, hit La Guaira state in Venezuela, and a 7.4 quake in Colombia killed at least 289 in August.

Panama lies on the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, near the junction of the Cocos, Nazca and Caribbean plates. The most recent tremor to cause widespread destruction in the country came in 1991, when a magnitude 7.4 quake with its epicentre across the border in Costa Rica killed 23 people and left thousands homeless in Panama’s Bocas del Toro region.