Panama seems to escape mass deaths after a magnitude 7.7 quake damages hundreds of buildings

Central Panama shook for close to a minute on Friday afternoon, October 9, when a magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck beneath Herrera province. The U.S. Geological Survey places the epicenter about 12 km west-southwest of the small community of Pitaloza Arriba, at a depth near 12.6 km, and timed the quake at 12:56 p.m. local time (17:56 GMT), AFP reports. The USGS first estimated magnitude 8.0, then revised the figure to 7.6 and then 7.7, according to The Associated Press. Panama’s own Geosciences Institute put the magnitude lower, at 7.5, the Spanish news agency EFE reports. A second strong quake, magnitude 6.6 by USGS figures, followed about two and a half hours later farther west, and the agency logged a magnitude 6.0 aftershock near La Tronosa that night.

So far, the human toll seems far lighter than the shaking suggested. In its latest tally, the National Civil Protection System (SINAPROC) counted 27 people with minor injuries nationwide and no deaths or missing people, EFE and AFP report. René García, head of emergency operations, told AFP he had no reports of fatalities. President José Raúl Mulino said authorities had documented no deaths as of Friday evening but cautioned that the picture could change in the coming hours or days, AP reports. He added that nobody had felt ready for a disaster of this type, per AP.

Physical damage looks wide. EFE, citing SINAPROC, lists harm across nine provinces: 142 homes, four apartment buildings, 188 schools, 20 health facilities, 26 government buildings, 13 churches, seven hotels, nine bridges, many stretches of road, and some water-treatment plants, with about 300 people evacuated. Mulino called the event “a major disaster” and said some roads had “completely collapsed,” AFP and The Guardian report. Health Minister Fernando Boyd named Herrera, Coclé, and Los Santos as the hardest-hit provinces and said the town of Tonosí in Los Santos had become completely cut off. Boyd said officials hoped to reach the town by air because roads offered no way in, per AFP.

Penonomé, the capital of Coclé province, carries some of the most visible scars. One of the two towers of the San Juan Bautista Cathedral collapsed while several priests and Bishop Edgardo Cedeño met inside, EFE reports, quoting the bishop. Omar Smith of the civil protection service told the Telemetro Reporta channel that one person suffered injuries from falling debris in the city, and he confirmed a partial collapse and cracks at the cathedral, plus damage to the governor’s office and the Dos Continentes hotel, AP reports. Coclé alone counted 50 damaged homes and 17 people with minor injuries, and eight families moved into a shelter, according to EFE. “Like nothing we ever experienced,” Juana Alveo, a 38-year-old cashier in Penonomé, told AFP; she said her daughter got trapped at school. Local outlets also reported the collapse of the Church of San Atanasio in Los Santos, a site Panama declared national heritage in 1938, AP notes.

In Panama City, roughly 200 km from the epicenter, office workers poured out of skyscrapers. Salomon Andion, 46, told AFP that the strong, prolonged shaking scared him; he left his 15-story building. Videos shared online showed water spilling from a rooftop pool and a bridge over the canal swaying with cars on it, AFP and The Guardian report. Civil protection official Smith said he had no reports of damage in the capital, according to AP. The Guardian quotes Juan Sanchez, an economy ministry employee stuck waiting for a bus, who asked how people would get home with every building evacuated.

Key infrastructure seems to have held. The Panama Canal Authority said shipping continued “as normal” while technical teams inspected facilities, AFP and AP report. Tocumen International Airport paused flights after the first quake and later reopened, and some flights got diverted, per AFP and AP. The Guardian reports that the Cobre Panamá copper mine reported normal operations. A tsunami warning for the coasts of Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Guatemala got lifted, AP reports, although Néstor Luque of the University of Panama’s Geosciences Institute said seawater had already reached homes near the coast on Isla Cañas. The education ministry suspended classes nationwide, AFP reports, and power provider Naturgy reported outages in six provinces, according to The Guardian.

Aftershock counts vary by source and by hour. AP cites University of Panama seismologists recording more than 45 aftershocks, The Guardian more than 40, AFP more than 80 including one above magnitude 6.0, and EFE more than a hundred. The USGS exposure estimate put about 43,000 Panamanians in areas of at least severe shaking and projected economic losses between 1% and 10% of gross domestic product, The Guardian reports. That estimate comes from a model, not a damage count.

Why did a quake this strong leave no confirmed deaths, while Venezuela’s back-to-back June quakes killed more than 6,500 people and a magnitude 7.4 quake in Colombia in August killed at least 289, as AP reports? Carlos Valdés, who heads the seismology department at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, told AP that strict building codes, especially for skyscrapers in the capital, may explain part of the gap. The epicenter also sat in a sparsely populated area, The Guardian notes. AFP reports that strong quakes rarely hit central Panama; most strike in western Chiriquí province near Costa Rica. AP notes that the last quake to cause widespread damage, a magnitude 7.4 event centered in Costa Rica in 1991, killed 23 people. Panama had scheduled a national evacuation drill for the following Monday, according to The Guardian.

Help offers arrived quickly. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote on X that his office had begun “rapidly mobilizing resources and personnel to assist” at Panama’s request, AP and AFP report. Mulino said he had spoken with the presidents of Chile, Uruguay, and Guatemala, among others, per AP, and leaders of Colombia, Ecuador, Costa Rica, and Venezuela also offered aid. Mulino also urged calm on X: “What happened should not be used to generate alarm and disorder” AFP reports.

Open questions this desk will watch: whether isolated areas such as Tonosí report casualties once crews reach them; whether the official magnitude settles at 7.5 or 7.7; final damage and cost figures; and how many people stay out of their homes while aftershocks continue.