Zoraida Diaz / Reuters
Residents look at the ruins of the Bellavista Catholic Church in Bellavista, Costa Rica, after a 7.6 magnitude earthquake hit the Central American country on Wednesday.
By NBC News wire services
SAN JOSE, Costa Rica -- It appeared Thursday that Costa Rica escaped relatively unscathed from the powerful earthquake that hit the country Wednesday, sparking landslides and knocking down buildings without directly killing anyone.
Striking a tourist region popular with Hollywood stars, Costa Rica's severest quake in over two decades sowed panic in the capital San Jose, disrupting power supplies and communications, and caused an entire hospital on the Pacific coast to be evacuated.
Having briefly sparked tsunami warnings, the 7.6 magnitude earthquake was first thought to have claimed two lives, but the Red Cross later revised its estimate and said just one woman died in the quake when she suffered a heart attack.
Later, after emergency services had delivered initial findings on the impact of the earthquake, President Laura Chinchilla said that no one had died as a result of it.
"There weren't any lives lost or serious physical injuries as a result of the events this morning," she told a news conference in San Jose.
When asked about the heart attack victim, Chinchilla said she did not believe the quake had caused the death.
Costa Rican television is airing video that apparently shows violent shaking and rumbling caused a 7.6 magnitude earthquake that shook the country. Msnbc's Tom Roberts reports.
Countries like Mexico, Colombia and Panama had offered Costa Rica assistance, but that didn't seem necessary because the extent of the damage appeared contained, Chinchilla added.
The epicenter of the quake was in the northwestern province of Guanacaste, and split open tarmac roads, cracked gravestones and sent books tumbling off library shelves.
20 injured as major earthquake damages Costa Rica coast
The quake was relatively deep at 25 miles down and it is thought that mitigated the effect on the surface.
"If it was a shallower event, it would be a significantly higher hazard," seismologist Daniel McNamara of the U.S. Geological Survey told The Associated Press.
The area is a seismically active zone where the Cocos tectonic plate dives beneath the Caribbean plate. "All along the Pacific coast of Central America, you can expect fairly big earthquakes," McNamara added.
Costa Rican television said 22 people were treated for injuries, but the Red Cross could not confirm this.
Locals were shocked by the force of the earthquake, which was felt as far away as Nicaragua and Panama, and the biggest to hit Costa Rica since a 7.6 magnitude quake in 1991 left 47 dead.?The last serious quake to hit Costa Rica was a 6.1 magnitude quake in January 2009, which killed 40 people.?
"I was inside my car at a stop sign and all of a sudden everything started shaking. I thought the street was going to break in two," said Erich Johanning, a 30-year-old who works in Internet marketing in San Jose. "Immediately, I saw dozens of people running out of their homes and office buildings."
Dozens of patients were transported out of the Monsenor Sanabria hospital just yards from the Pacific after the facade of the nine-storey building began to crumble during the quake, police from the port city of Puntarenas said.
Local media said the building housed 218 patients and that all were relocated to other hospitals or sent home.
Mel Gibson's house near epicenter
Actor Mel Gibson owns a lush forest retreat at Playa Barrigona in Samara near the epicenter, which he recently put up for sale for $29.75 million. Guests to the 500-acre property have included Bruce Willis and Britney Spears.
Esteban Moreno, of the national emergency services, said some buildings in the worst-hit areas had collapsed, though he added they were mostly older, and of poor quality.
Whole communities in those parts were still without water and electricity, but those services should be restored again by midnight, Chinchilla told the news conference.
Some 21 hotels reported minor damage such as broken windows and fallen objects in Guanacaste province and the north of the country, but none reported serious damage, said Alcides Mora, spokesperson for the Costa Rican Tourism Institute.
Officials said landslides had blocked some roads and that damage was done to some homes in built-up areas in the Nicoya Peninsula on the Pacific coast.
In the town of Nicoya, about 7 miles from the epicenter, Selenia Obando, a receptionist at the Hotel Curime, said the building was left without lights and power. A floor had collapsed in the hotel but there were no injuries.
"It was horrible, like being in a blender going round and round," Obando said. "All the water sloshed out of the swimming pool. It's now about half full."
Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
More world stories from NBC News:
Follow World News from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook
jamie lee curtis spring equinox audacious pollen count mexico city first day of spring mexico earthquake
No comments:
Post a Comment