2019–20 Puerto Rico earthquakes
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Starting on December 28, 2019, and progressing into 2022, the southwestern part of the island of
Puerto Rico Puerto Rico (; abbreviated PR; tnq, Boriken, ''Borinquen''), officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico ( es, link=yes, Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico, lit=Free Associated State of Puerto Rico), is a Caribbean island and unincorporated ...
was struck by an
earthquake swarm In seismology, an earthquake swarm is a sequence of seismic events occurring in a local area within a relatively short period. The time span used to define a swarm varies, but may be days, months, or years. Such an energy release is different f ...
,''Magnitude 5.9 earthquake rocks Puerto Rico and causes landslide in Peñuelas.''
Grace Hauck. USA TODAY. 11 January 2020. Accessed 14 January 2020.
including 11 that were of magnitude 5 or greater. The largest and most damaging of this sequence was a magnitude 6.4 , which occurred on January 7 at 04:24  AST (08:24  UTC), with a maximum felt intensity of VIII (''Severe'') on the
Modified Mercalli intensity scale The Modified Mercalli intensity scale (MM, MMI, or MCS), developed from Giuseppe Mercalli's Mercalli intensity scale of 1902, is a seismic intensity scale used for measuring the intensity of shaking produced by an earthquake. It measures the eff ...
. At least one person was killed and several others were injured. A 5.8 earthquake the previous day caused the destruction of a natural arch, a tourist attraction at Punta Ventana in
Guayanilla Guayanilla (, ) is a town and municipality of Puerto Rico located on the southern coast of the island, bordering the Caribbean Sea, south of Adjuntas, east of Yauco; and west of Peñuelas and about west of Ponce. Guayanilla is spread over 16 ...
. A 5.9 aftershock on Saturday, January 11, damaged many structures, including several historical buildings as well as
modern Modern may refer to: History *Modern history ** Early Modern period ** Late Modern period *** 18th century *** 19th century *** 20th century ** Contemporary history * Moderns, a faction of Freemasonry that existed in the 18th century Philosophy ...
high-rises in the city of Ponce. Power was lost island-wide immediately after the quake, and was increasingly restored over a period of a week. Damage to homes was extensive and, by 14 January, more than 8,000 people were homeless and camping outdoors in various types of shelters, with 40,000 others camping outside their homes, just in the city of Ponce alone. There were refugees in 28 government-sponsored refugee centers spread over 14 municipalities of southern and central Puerto Rico.''4,924 personas ubicadas en 28 refugios.''
Accessed 14 January 2020.
Damage to government structures was calculated in the hundreds of millions and financial losses were estimated in $3.1 billion. A power plant that supplied over a quarter of Puerto Rico's energy needs was badly damaged and was shut down, with repairs estimated to take at least a year. The day of the main quake, January 7, Puerto Rico governor Wanda Vázquez Garced declared a state of emergency and activated the
Puerto Rico National Guard The Puerto Rico National Guard (PRNG) – es, Guardia Nacional de Puerto Rico– is the national guard of the U.S. Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. The Constitution of the United States specifically charges the National Guard with dual federal and s ...
and the Puerto Rico State Guard. That same day, she also made available $130 million in aid to the municipalities affected. The
White House The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. It is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., and has been the residence of every U.S. president since John Adams in ...
also approved $5 million in federal emergency relief.''La declaración de emergencia de Donald Trump tiene un límite de $5 millones: FEMA confirma que en espera de una declaración de desastre, su intervención tiene por el momento un tope financiero.''
El Nuevo Dia. Guaynabo, Puerto Rico. 13 January 2020. Accessed 13 January 2020.
On January 12, the day after the January 11 5.9 aftershock, the governor distributed $12 million to six municipalities most affected by the quake.''Cerca de 5,000 refugiados a casi una semana del terremoto del 7 de enero.''
Agencia EFE. 13 January 2020. Accessed 13 January 2020.
''Wanda Vázquez entrega cheque de $2 millones a municipios del sur afectados por el terremoto: Los pueblos de Ponce, Yauco, Guánica, Guayanilla, Peñuelas y Utuado podrán usar los fondos inmediatamente''.
Accessed 13 January 2020.
Tent cities A tent city is a temporary housing facility made using tents or other temporary structures. State governments or military organizations set up tent cities to house evacuees, refugees, or soldiers. UNICEF's Supply Division supplies expandable te ...
were set up in five of the hardest-hit towns with space for some 3,200 refugees.


Tectonic setting

Puerto Rico lies at the highly oblique convergent boundary between the
Caribbean Plate The Caribbean Plate is a mostly oceanic tectonic plate underlying Central America and the Caribbean Sea off the north coast of South America. Roughly 3.2 million square kilometers (1.2 million square miles) in area, the Caribbean Plate border ...
and the
North American Plate The North American Plate is a tectonic plate covering most of North America, Cuba, the Bahamas, extreme northeastern Asia, and parts of Iceland and the Azores. With an area of , it is the Earth's second largest tectonic plate, behind the Paci ...
. A separate Puerto Rico–Virgin Islands microplate has been identified based on
GPS The Global Positioning System (GPS), originally Navstar GPS, is a satellite-based radionavigation system owned by the United States government and operated by the United States Space Force. It is one of the global navigation satellite sy ...
observations. To the north the North American Plate is being subducted beneath this
microplate A microplate, also known as a microtiter plate (''Microtiter'' is a registered trademark in the United States, therefore it should not be used generically without attribution), microwell plate or multiwell, is a flat plate with multiple "wells" ...
along the
Puerto Rico Trench The Puerto Rico Trench is located on the boundary between the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. The oceanic trench, the deepest in the Atlantic, is associated with a complex transition between the Lesser Antilles subduction zone to the sou ...
. To the south of Puerto Rico the microplate is being
thrust Thrust is a reaction force described quantitatively by Newton's third law. When a system expels or accelerates mass in one direction, the accelerated mass will cause a force of equal magnitude but opposite direction to be applied to that ...
southwards over the Caribbean Plate along the Muertos Thrust system. On the upper slope and shelf the current style of faulting is extensional with a series of WSW-ENE trending normal faults, such as the Ponce Fault and the Bajo Tasmanian Fault. Several faults are also known to cross parts of the main island.


Earthquake sequence

The sequence began on December 28, 2019 with a 4.7 earthquake, followed closely by a 5.0 event in the early hours of December 29. Several earthquakes of M <5 occurred over the next few days, followed by a 5.8 event at 10:32 UTC on January 6. The largest event, a 6.4, occurred the next morning, followed by a 5.6 event within 10 minutes and a 5.0 about 15 minutes after that. The 6.4 event had a
focal mechanism The focal mechanism of an earthquake describes the deformation in the source region that generates the seismic waves. In the case of a fault-related event it refers to the orientation of the fault plane that slipped and the slip vector and ...
consistent with normal faulting on a fault trending WSW-ENE. A 5.9 event was then logged on January 11 at 12:54 UTC. In the first month of the sequence there were a total of 11 M ≥5 earthquakes and a further 82 in the range M 4–4.9. A 5.4 earthquake occurred on May 2 at 11:13 UTC in the same area as the M 6.4 event and with a similar focal mechanism. As of May 2, after a further two M>4 shocks in the same area, the total number of earthquakes in the sequence of M>3 exceeded 1,000 and there had been 95 of M>4.


Response

Puerto Rico governor Wanda Vázquez Garced declared a state of emergency on January 7 and mobilized the
Puerto Rico National Guard The Puerto Rico National Guard (PRNG) – es, Guardia Nacional de Puerto Rico– is the national guard of the U.S. Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. The Constitution of the United States specifically charges the National Guard with dual federal and s ...
. On January 8, the day after the main quake, the Ponce municipal government registered 1,111 residents in city shelters, "not including hundreds more" who drove to government-designated meeting sites, such as
Estadio Paquito Montaner The Estadio Francisco ("Paquito") Montaner (English: ''Francisco ("Paquito") Montaner Stadium'') is a multi-use stadium in Ponce, Puerto Rico. It is home to the Leones de Ponce team of the Puerto Rico Baseball League (LBPPR) and FC Leones of ...
, to sleep in their cars. The parking lot at
Auditorio Juan Pachin Vicens Auditorio may refer to: * Auditorio light rail station, in Guadalajara, Jalisco * Auditorio metro station, in Mexico City * Auditorio (Mexico City Metrobús) See also * Auditorio Nacional (disambiguation) * {{disambiguation ...
was also used as a meeting site. The Bernardino Cordero Bernard Vocational High School was also used as a shelter. The night after the quake, it was estimated that over 40,000 Ponce residents chose to sleep in their cars instead of their homes out of fear of more quakes. By January 13 the number of refugees was estimated at around 3,000 Island-wide, but the municipal officials of some local governments believed that figure was probably about right for refugees in just their own single municipalities. Another estimate out the number of refugees at 5,000. On January 7, the Puerto Rican government made available $130 million in aid. Late January 7,
FEMA The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is an agency of the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS), initially created under President Jimmy Carter by Presidential Reorganization Plan No. 3 of 1978 and implemented by two Exec ...
confirmed that US president Donald Trump had issued a (non-disaster) emergency declaration with a $5 million cap. The $5 million emergency declaration monies were to be spent on emergency services only. On January 12, 2020, Puerto Rico governor Wanda Vázquez Garced made a disbursement of $2 million to each of six municipalities most affected by the quake; the monies came from the Puerto Rico State Emergency Reserve Fund. The government set up a central command center, where all pertinent state and municipal dependencies supporting the relief effort were to set up base and coordinate activities at the Polydeportivo Frankie Colon in Urbanización Los Caobos,
Barrio Bucaná ''Barrio'' () is a Spanish word that means "quarter" or "neighborhood". In the modern Spanish language, it is generally defined as each area of a city, usually delimited by functional (e.g. residential, commercial, industrial, etc.), social, arch ...
, Ponce. It also became a collection center for items for the earthquake homeless.''COE en Ponce servirá como centro de acopio para recibir donaciones.''
Cyber News. 12 January 2020. Accessed 22 January 2020.
By January 14, over 600 soldiers of the Puerto Rico National Guard had set up five
tent cities A tent city is a temporary housing facility made using tents or other temporary structures. State governments or military organizations set up tent cities to house evacuees, refugees, or soldiers. UNICEF's Supply Division supplies expandable te ...
for the homeless, with at least some tents outfitted with air conditioning for the bed-ridden and the elderly, in the towns of Guánica, Yauco, Guayanilla, Peñuelas and Ponce, with facilities for over 3,200 refugees.


Effects


Human losses

A man died in Urbanización Jardines del Caribe in the city of Ponce as a direct result of the January 7 quake, and eight others were injured also in Ponce. A woman died of a heart attack in the town of
Guayanilla Guayanilla (, ) is a town and municipality of Puerto Rico located on the southern coast of the island, bordering the Caribbean Sea, south of Adjuntas, east of Yauco; and west of Peñuelas and about west of Ponce. Guayanilla is spread over 16 ...
after a 4.36-magnitude aftershock hit overnight during the night of January 9 to January 10. By January 10, two additional people had died of medical conditions attributed to the effects of the earthquakes.''As Lights Flicker On After Puerto Rico Earthquake, Officials Say 3 More Have Died.''
The New York Times. 10 January 2020. Accessed 13 January 2020.


Homeless

There were refugees in 28 government-sponsored refugee centers in the southern and central Puerto Rico municipalities of
Yauco Yauco () is a town and municipality in southern Puerto Rico. Although the downtown is inland, the municipality stretches to a southern coast facing the Caribbean Sea. Yauco is located south of Maricao, Lares and Adjuntas; east of Sabana Grande ...
, Guánica, Ponce, Peñuelas, Guayanilla, Utuado,
Maricao Maricao () is a town and the second-least populous municipality of Puerto Rico; it is located at the western edge of the Cordillera Central. It is a small town set around a small square in hilly terrain, north of San Germán, Sabana Grande and ...
,
Juana Díaz Juana is a Spanish female first name. It is the feminine form of Juan (English John), and thus corresponds to the English names Jane, Janet, Jean, Joan, and Joanna. Juanita is a common variant. The name Juana may refer to: People *Juana I (14 ...
,
Adjuntas Adjuntas (, ) is a small mountainside town and municipality in Puerto Rico located central midwestern portion of the island on the Cordillera Central, north of Yauco, Guayanilla, and Peñuelas; southeast of Utuado; east of Lares and Yauco; an ...
, Sabana Grande, San Germán, Lajas,
Jayuya Jayuya (, ) is a town and municipality of Puerto Rico located in the mountainous center region of the island, north of Ponce; east of Utuado; and west of Ciales. Jayuya is spread over 10 barrios and Jayuya Pueblo (the downtown and administra ...
and Mayagüez. The quakes also caused 28 families in
Lares Lares ( , ; archaic , singular ''Lar'') were guardian deities in ancient Roman religion. Their origin is uncertain; they may have been hero-ancestors, guardians of the hearth, fields, boundaries, or fruitfulness, or an amalgam of these. Lares ...
to lose their homes. At least three residential high-rise buildings in Ponce were rendered unusable, leaving the residents homeless. On January 13, it was reported that some 3,000 homes had been destroyed or significantly damaged. By January 14, the number of homeless region-wide had climbed to 8,000. A 15 January 2020 register of homes rendered uninhabitable listed at least 789 properties. The number of homes with some level of damage was, however, significantly higher. For example, according to its mayor, in the town of
Yauco Yauco () is a town and municipality in southern Puerto Rico. Although the downtown is inland, the municipality stretches to a southern coast facing the Caribbean Sea. Yauco is located south of Maricao, Lares and Adjuntas; east of Sabana Grande ...
alone, there were 3,200 homes with some degree of damage. Numerous authorities pointed to the emotional toll on the people, particularly on entire families who had been left homeless.


Physical damage

The January 7 quake destroyed numerous structures, including the Agripina Seda elementary school in Guánica and the Inmaculada Concepción Church in Guayanilla. Also severely damaged by the January 7 quake were the La Guancha Recreational and Cultural Complex, which was made inoperable and where 24 establishments had to shut down their operations, and
Auditorio Juan Pachín Vicéns The Auditorio Juan Pachín Vicéns (English: ''Juan Pachín Vicens Auditorium''), formerly, Coliseo Juan Pachín Vicéns (English: Juan Pachin Vicens Coliseum), a.k.a., Coliseo de Ponce, is a sports venue in the city of Ponce, Puerto Rico. The a ...
. The Moscoso Building of the
Ponce City Hall The Ponce City Hall ( es, Casa Alcaldía de Ponce) is a historic city hall in Ponce, Puerto Rico. It is located it the center of the city, on Calle Degetau, across from Plaza Degetau in the Ponce Historic Zone. The building serves as the seat ...
was also damaged. The January 11 aftershock inflicted further damage. Among the structures damaged by this aftershock were the
Ponce Servicios Ponce Servicos, formerly Plaza del Mercado Juan Bigas, is a brutalist municipal building located Ponce, Puerto Rico. It is the largest building in the municipality in terms of footprint area and the only one that occupies an entire city block. T ...
municipal government building,
Museo de la Masacre de Ponce The ''Museo de la Masacre de Ponce'' (the Ponce Massacre Museum) is a human rights museum and historic building in Ponce, Puerto Rico. It depicts the history and events surrounding the Ponce massacre, which occurred in broad daylight on Palm Sun ...
,''Serios daños en museos de Ponce.''
Sara Marrero Caban. Voces del Sur. Ponce, Puerto Rico. 11 January 2020. Accessed 11 January 2020.
Residencia Armstrong-Poventud, and Casa Vives. In Ponce both historic and modern buildings were damaged. Among these were Catedral de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, Museo de la Masacre, Iglesia Evangélica (northwest corner of C. Unión and C. Vives); "La Gloria" store on
Paseo Atocha Paseo Atocha is a pedestrian shopping mall in the Ponce Historic Zone, a historic district in Ponce, Puerto Rico. For over a century the narrow Calle Atocha was bustling retail center opened to vehicular traffic, yet flooded with shoppers. Cong ...
, Hotel Ponce Plaza, Condominium Ponciana on C. Marina, Darlington Building, also on C. Marina. The damages forced the closing of several downtown streets. There was also damage to Logia Aurora, also on C. Marina. Guanica and Yauco were particularly impacted. The Guanica lighthouse was among the buildings in that town with particular damage. On January 11, Ponce alone had sustained an estimated $150 million in damages. By 14 January 2020, the vice-mayor of Ponce estimated the cost of the damages so far in her town, one of the towns most severely hit, at $1 billion. Financial losses were calculated at $3.1 billion US dollars. The May 2 M 5.5 earthquake caused further damage to buildings in Ponce. Some power outages were also reported.


Public infrastructure

There was no electricity in Ponce and in most of Puerto Rico on Tuesday, January 7, the day of the 4:24AM earthquake. "More than 250,000" residents island-wide were left without water and another half a million had no power. There were also rock and landslides. Among damage to infrastructure, the 5.9 aftershock quake the morning of January 11 created a crack in a bridge, and was expected to delay restoration of power. The Costa Sur power plant, which provides a quarter of the island's power, had sustained "destruction on a grand scale" and estimates said it would take at least a year for repairs to be completed. Consideration was being given the building a brand new plant instead of repairing the damaged plant. Road damages due to landslides included Puerto Rico highways
PR-132 Puerto Rico Highway 132 (PR-132) is a secondary highway that connects the town of Guayanilla to the city of Ponce, Puerto Rico. The road runs through the town of Peñuelas before reaching Ponce. In Ponce, PR-132 starts where Calle Villa ends.El ...
,
PR-139 Puerto Rico Highway 139 (PR-139) is a two-way secondaryPR-218. PR-2 had landslides in the area of
Peñón de Ponce Peñón de Ponce is a boulder in the municipality of Ponce, Puerto Rico, located in the western coastal section of the municipality, in Sector Punta Cucharas, Barrio Canas, immediately north of Puerto Rico Highway 2 (PR-2), kilometer 220.1. ...
;
PR-9 Puerto Rico Highway 9 (PR-9), also called the ''Anillo de Circunvalación de Ponce''
, a 4-lane highway under construction, had damages that set back the opening date several months; and
PR-52 Puerto Rico Highway 52 (PR-52), a major toll road in Puerto Rico, is also known as ''Autopista Luis A. Ferré''. It was formerly called ''Expreso Las Américas''. It runs from PR-1 in southwest Río Piedras and heads south until it intersects wit ...
had damage to its Ponce toll booth plaza. Among bridges damaged were two on
PR-127 Puerto Rico Highway 127 (PR-127) is a road that travels from Yauco, Puerto Rico to Peñuelas. This highway begins at its intersection with PR-121 and PR-128 in Susúa Baja and ends at its junction with PR-2 Puerto Rico Highway 2 (PR-2) is ...
in
Guayanilla Guayanilla (, ) is a town and municipality of Puerto Rico located on the southern coast of the island, bordering the Caribbean Sea, south of Adjuntas, east of Yauco; and west of Peñuelas and about west of Ponce. Guayanilla is spread over 16 ...
, at kilometer markers 9.1 and 10.3.


Aftermath

On January 17, Puerto Rico governor fired three members of her Cabinet after a group of Puerto Ricans broke into an enormous State warehouse in the
La Guancha Guancha is a Chinese news site founded by Eric X. Li. Guancha or La Guancha may also refer to: * ''Clathrina'', a genus of sponges also known as ''Guancha'' * La Guancha, Tenerife, a municipality in Tenerife, Canary Islands * Complejo Recreativo ...
sector of
Barrio Playa Barrio Playa, also known as Playa de Ponce, Ponce Playa, or La Playa, is one of the thirty-one barrios that comprise the municipality of Ponce, Puerto Rico. Along with Bucaná, Canas, Vayas, and Capitanejo, Playa is one of the municipality's ...
in Ponce and found it fully stocked with emergency items including cots, gas stoves, batteries, water, baby formula, diapers that had been stored there since after
Hurricane Maria Hurricane Maria was a deadly Saffir–Simpson scale#Category 5, Category 5 Tropical cyclone, hurricane that devastated the northeastern Caribbean in September 2017, particularly Dominica, Saint Croix, and Puerto Rico. It is regarded as the wo ...
, and which the governor had not been made aware of. The governor nominated the Adjutant General of the Puerto Rico National Guard to take over the post of fired Office of Emergency Management Secretary and ordered him to immediately move the items to the refugee centers of the municipalities affected by the earthquake and to distribute them to those people needing them. The Puerto Rican Government contracted the services of nearly 50 structural engineers to evaluate each public school in the Island for structural stability post-earthquake and to certify them as safe enough to open. Classes were delayed more than 10 days Island-wide, longer in the two school regions most intensely hit by the earthquakes. In the aftermath of the main quake and its major aftershocks, thousands of residents, including many whose homes had not been damaged, developed seismophobia and continued sleeping outdoors weeks after the earthquake of January 7.


Scientific activity

On January 10, USGS and Puerto Rico Seismic Network (PRSN) scientists were working to install six sets of temporary seismometers near the southern coast to augment the existing PRSN instruments.


See also

*
List of earthquakes in 2020 This is a list of earthquakes in 2020. Only earthquakes of magnitude 6 or above are included, unless they result in damage and/or casualties, or are notable for other reasons. All dates are listed according to UTC time. Maximum intensities are ...
*
List of earthquakes in Puerto Rico Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands lie at the boundary between the Caribbean and North American plates, making these territories prone to earthquakes. This is a highly active seismic region both surrounded and traversed by numerous fault lines; ...
* 2020 Caribbean earthquake * 2020 in Puerto Rico * 2020 in the Caribbean *
2019–2020 dengue fever epidemic The 2019–2020 dengue fever epidemic was an epidemic of the infectious disease dengue fever in several countries of Southeast Asia, including the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Thailand, Singapore, and Laos. T ...
*
Hurricane Maria Hurricane Maria was a deadly Saffir–Simpson scale#Category 5, Category 5 Tropical cyclone, hurricane that devastated the northeastern Caribbean in September 2017, particularly Dominica, Saint Croix, and Puerto Rico. It is regarded as the wo ...
*
COVID-19 pandemic in Puerto Rico The COVID-19 pandemic in Puerto Rico is an ongoing viral pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), a novel infectious disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). It is part of the ongoing COVID-19 pand ...
*
2020s The 2020s (pronounced "twenty-twenties" shortened to "the '20s" and referred to as the twenties) is the current decade, which began on January 1, 2020, and will end on December 31, 2029. The 2020s began with the COVID-19 pandemic — the first ...


References


External links

*
''Ofrecerán taller sobre manejo de ansiedad en Maunabo.''
(In Spanish) Voces del Sur. Ponce, Puerto Rico. 27 January 2020. Accessed 4 February 2020. {{DEFAULTSORT:2019-20 Puerto Rico earthquakes 2019 earthquakes 2019 in Puerto Rico 2019 natural disasters in the United States
Puerto Rico Puerto Rico (; abbreviated PR; tnq, Boriken, ''Borinquen''), officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico ( es, link=yes, Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico, lit=Free Associated State of Puerto Rico), is a Caribbean island and Unincorporated ...
2020 in Puerto Rico 2020 natural disasters in the United States December 2019 events in the United States Earthquakes in Puerto Rico January 2020 events in the United States