by Jose Alvarado Vega

A mod­er­ate earth­quake struck Puerto Rico early Sun­day morn­ing, dam­ag­ing build­ings and rous­ing res­i­dents from their sleep through­out the island. No injuries were reported.

The 5.8 mag­ni­tude earth­quake, which struck at about 1:16 a.m., was cen­tered four miles north­east of the Moca inland com­mu­nity of Espino — lat­i­tude 18.4 north, lon­gi­tude 67.07 west — at a depth of about 67 miles, accord­ing to the U.S. Geo­log­i­cal Sur­vey. It was felt as far west as the Domini­can Repub­lic and as far east as the U.S. Vir­gin Islands.
Christina von Hillebrandt-Andrade, direc­tor of the National Oceanic and Atmos­pheric Administration’s Caribbean Tsunami Warn­ing Pro­gram, said that there was no dan­ger of a tsunami since the earth­quake occurred on land and had a mag­ni­tude of less than 6.5 on the Richter scale. How­ever, “many res­i­dents” on the Mayagüez coast fled to higher ground fear­ing the worst, she said.
The quake cracked the walls, ceil­ings and foun­da­tions of homes and office build­ings in the munic­i­pal­i­ties of Florida, Lares, Moca, Utu­ado, Yauco, Aguadilla, Jayuya, Ponce and Vega Baja, State Emer­gency Man­age­ment and Dis­as­ter Admin­is­tra­tion Agency Herib­erto Saurí said dur­ing a press con­fer­ence later in the day.
The quake spilled rocks over a high­way in Utu­ado, where it also shifted a con­crete house some four inches from its foun­da­tions. The sin­gle bed-ridden res­i­dent of this home was removed as a pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sure, Saurí said.
In Ponce, the bal­cony of a house on Third Street in Bar­ri­ada Clausell col­lapsed.
Engi­neers were try­ing to deter­mine if other dam­aged homes were safe, Saurí said.
Due to the nature of seis­mic waves, the earth­quake was felt more strongly by peo­ple liv­ing on land-filled grounds, in higher ele­va­tions and in high-rise build­ings, Hillebrandt-Andrade, who also headed the Puerto Rico Seis­mic Net­work, said dur­ing the press con­fer­ence.
In fact, res­i­dents of the San Juan metro area, about 65 miles from the earth­quake epi­cen­ter, were fright­ened by the strong shak­ing. Peo­ple who felt the earth­quake told the Daily Sun that they first felt a slight sway­ing that grew into heav­ier trem­bling that lasted about a minute.
Many said that they had not felt such a strong earth­quake in years, if ever, and expressed fear given the Jan­u­ary 12 earth­quake in the neigh­bor­ing Caribbean nation of Haiti killed more than 200 thou­sand peo­ple.
Car­olina Munic­i­pal Police reported that 30 res­i­dents, includ­ing chil­dren, of the Tor­res de Sabana pub­lic hous­ing com­plex evac­u­ated their apart­ments and feared return­ing to their homes because they heard on the radio that an earth­quake of greater mag­ni­tude could fol­low. The res­i­dents, gath­ered at the park­ing lot of an auto­mo­bile prod­ucts estab­lish­ment, were not moved by the clar­i­fi­ca­tion made by Car­olina Emer­gency Man­age­ment Offi­cial Juan Morales, who said that no such warn­ings had been issued.
Vanessa Tor­res, 39, a res­i­dent of the Santa María sub­di­vi­sion of Río Piedras, woke up early Sat­ur­day morn­ing to find her bed shak­ing.
“My hus­band asked why I was mov­ing the bed, and I told him I wasn’t,” said Tor­res, who added that they both jumped out of bed to check on their two daugh­ters in an adja­cent room. She said her 13-year-old daugh­ter was fright­ened, although her 10-year-old daugh­ter was fast asleep.
When asked if she thought her fam­ily was pre­pared for a greater earth­quake, Tor­res said that she did not know how to answer that.
“I’m not sure there is some­thing you can do that could make a dif­fer­ence in this type of sit­u­a­tion,” she said.
A Daily Sun edi­tor liv­ing on the 10^th floor of a con­do­minium in Con­dado said she felt the earth­quake.
“We were in our kitchen talk­ing, and all of a sud­den I felt the coun­ter­top move and the floor began to sway. It lasted about five sec­onds. I felt some slight move­ment after­ward, and then they faded away,” Daily Sun staffer, Rosario Fajardo said.
Eduardo Grau, 54, a res­i­dent of Bar­rio Monacil­los in Rio Piedras, said he was awak­ened by the quake and was ini­tially “a lit­tle intim­i­dated” when he saw the framed pic­tures slam­ming against the wall.
“I turned the light on and real­ized what was hap­pen­ing, but then I thought to myself, ‘This is a wooden house and it’s secure. It’s not a cement struc­ture that can cede,’” said Grau, who went back to sleep as soon as it was over. He said he had “never felt an earth­quake like this.”
Lydia Pabón, a res­i­dent of the Vista Her­mosa pub­lic hous­ing com­plex in Río Piedras, said she was watch­ing tele­vi­sion in her liv­ing room when she felt the futon in which she was sit­ting shake. She quickly looked out from her bal­cony to see the con­crete light poles sway­ing.
“I have felt tremors before, but noth­ing like this,” said Pabón, who noted that the shak­ing lasted sev­eral min­utes. Her 14-year-old son, who was at a birth­day party sev­eral floors below, called her to say he was scared, she said.
Other res­i­dents in San Juan Sun­day said they were in other parts of the island when they felt the quake.
Mer­cedes Lugo, 48, a store win­dow designer from Río Piedras, said she was at a relative’s apart­ment in the east­ern munic­i­pal­ity of Ceiba. She was sleep­ing on the sofa, when she was roused by the shak­ing of the tele­vi­sion and other objects nearby.
“There was this door that seemed to want to crash in,” she said.
Cristine Pérez, 27, a billing employee from San Juan, was stay­ing with rel­a­tives in Moca, just miles from the epi­cen­ter. She ini­tially felt a slight shak­ing that grew stronger and shook pic­ture frames out of their place, she said, adding the house suf­fered no dam­ages.
Grizelle Rubildo, 46, a home­maker from the Sul­tana sub­di­vi­sion of Mayagüez who was vis­it­ing her mother in San Juan on Sun­day, said that while she is used to quakes that have roused her fam­ily from bed, the Sun­day morn­ing earth­quake was the strongest she and her fam­ily have ever felt in 20 years liv­ing there.
She first heard a roar, as if an 18-wheel truck had raced past her two-story house, and then felt the shak­ing, send­ing dec­o­ra­tive glass plates on a nearby desk crash­ing to the floor, she said. The house was not dam­aged, although she said that tremors over the past 15 years have grad­u­ally cracked the house’s walls and the con­crete divid­ing wall.
“We had felt a sim­i­lar quake in Feb­ru­ary of this year, but it was not even close to this one,” she said. “We all left the house and went into the street think­ing a stronger quake would occur.”
Her daugh­ter, Alexan­dra, 15, who was shop­ping with her at a Río Piedras shop­ping cen­ter, said she was just going to bed when she felt a slight rock­ing that grew into strong shak­ing. Her father came in to get her, she said.
Rubildo said the expe­ri­ence showed they were not pre­pared for the con­se­quences of a major earth­quake.
“We have to plan for this, and I’m going to get back­packs for each of fam­ily mem­ber and fill it with cloth­ing, water and a first aid kit,” she said, adding their home was built to with­stand an earth­quake by allow­ing it to sway.
The earth­quake is a wake-up call that time is run­ning out to pre­pare an ade­quate earth­quake mit­i­ga­tion plan for the island, Puerto Rico Engi­neers and Sur­vey­ors Asso­ci­a­tion Pres­i­dent Miguel Tor­res Díaz said Sun­day.
While for­mal con­struc­tion is designed to avoid col­lapse, the trade group is wor­ried about houses built on con­crete stilts with­out the required per­mits and design plans that com­ply with the build­ing code, he said.
“These struc­tures on stilts could endan­ger the safety of its res­i­dents because they would not remain stand­ing in the event of a strong earth­quake,” he said, adding the trade group is prepar­ing a mass edu­ca­tion project on the mat­ter.
He urged the pub­lic to con­sult the organization’s earth­quake and tsunami man­ual on its Web­site: www.ciapr.org. The group is also work­ing on amend­ments to the island’s build­ing code to rein­force stan­dards for new and exist­ing struc­tures, and which should be ready by the end of the year.
New Pro­gres­sive Party Sen. Luis Daniel Muñiz, who lives in Moca, said in a press release that pri­or­ity must be given to earth­quake pre­pared­ness and drills must be done to make the pub­lic aware of the poten­tial dan­ger to lives and prop­erty.
“We’re experts in man­ag­ing hur­ri­canes, but we are in dia­pers when an earth­quake occurs, or worst yet, a tsunami,” said Muñiz, who noted that he was at his home when Sunday’s earth­quake occurred. “It felt like the world was crash­ing down on us. Every­thing we had on the wall fell to the floor, and we got dizzy because the shak­ing was so strong.”

The strongest earth­quakes to have struck Puerto Rico

• The strongest earth­quake to have affected the island occurred on May 2, 1787 and may have reached 8.0 on the Richter scale, and may have been cen­tered to the north in the Puerto Rico Trench. It destroyed the Arecibo Catholic Church along with the Rosario and Con­cep­ción her­mitages, and dam­aged churches in Bayamón, Toa Baja and Mayagüez. It also dam­aged the Span­ish mil­i­tary for­ti­fi­ca­tion sys­tem in San Juan, crack­ing walls, cis­terns and guard houses at the San Felipe and San Cristo­bal fortresses.

• The most recent major earth­quake to have struck occurred on Oct. 11, 1918 and was cen­tered under the Mona Chan­nel, to the north­west of Aguadilla. It was mea­sured at 7.5 on the Richter scale and was accom­pa­nied by a tsunami that reached a height of six feet when it reached the Aguadilla coast, killing 40 peo­ple. The earth­quake itself killed 116 peo­ple in Mayagüez and along the west­ern coast, where it destroyed or severely dam­aged homes, fac­to­ries, pub­lic build­ings and bridges.

• On Nov. 18, 1867, just 20 days after the island was dev­as­tated by Hur­ri­cane San Nar­ciso, it was struck by a 7.5-magnitude earth­quake cen­tered off the south­east coast, between Puerto Rico and St. Croix, which cre­ated a tsunami that reached almost 500 feet into the Yabo­coa coast, and dam­ag­ing build­ings on the island’s east coast.