Cuba is located in an area with several active fault systems which produce on average about 2000 seismic events each year. [1] While most registered seismic events pass unnoticed, the island has been struck by a number of destructive earthquakes over the past four centuries, including several major quakes with a magnitude of 7.0 or above.
Approximately 70% of seismic activity in Cuba emanates from the Oriente fault zone, located in the Bartlett-Cayman fault system which runs along the south-eastern coast of Cuba and marks the tectonic boundary between the North American plate and the Caribbean plate. [2] The 12 currently active faults in Cuba also include the Cauto-Nipe, Cochinos and Nortecubana faults. [2] Destructive earthquakes originating from the Oriente fault occurred in 1766 (MI = 7.6), 1852 (MI = 7.2) and 1932 (Ms = 6.75). [3] Some studies suggested there is a high probability the Oriente fault would produce a magnitude 7 earthquake, [4] this happening in January 2020, with a magnitude of 7.7, the highest registered in this country's history.
Notable earthquakes in recent Cuban history include the following:
Name | Date | Epicentre | M | Intensity | Depth | Notes | Deaths |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1578 Cuba earthquake | Santiago de Cuba [1] | 6.8 | VIII | 30 km | Magnitude estimated at 6.8 ML on the Richter scale, intensity at VIII EMS-98. [1] | ||
1580 Cuba earthquake | Santiago de Cuba [5] | ||||||
1632 Cuba earthquake | Santiago de Cuba [6] | ||||||
1675 Cuba earthquake | Santiago de Cuba [1] [7] | 5.8 | VII | 30 km | Magnitude estimated at 5.8 ML on the Richter scale, intensity at VII EMS-98. [1] | ||
1678 Cuba earthquake | 14:59 | 1678-02-11Santiago de Cuba [7] | 6.8 | VIII | 30 km | Magnitude estimated at 6.8 ML on the Richter scale, intensity at VIII EMS-98. [1] | |
1679 Cuba earthquake | Santiago de Cuba [7] | ||||||
1682 Cuba earthquake | Santiago de Cuba [7] | 5.8 | VII | 30 km | Magnitude estimated at 5.8 ML on the Richter scale, intensity at VII EMS-98. [1] | ||
1693 Cuba earthquake | Havana [8] | "1,500 houses thrown down" | |||||
1757 Cuba earthquake | Santiago de Cuba [9] | ||||||
1766 Cuba earthquake | 05:14 | 1766-06-11Santiago de Cuba [10] | 7.6 MI [3] | IX | 35 km | Magnitude estimated at 7.6 ML on the Richter scale, intensity at IX EMS-98. [1] | 120 |
1826 Cuba earthquake | 09:26 | 1826-09-18Santiago de Cuba [11] | 5.8 | VII | 30 km | Magnitude estimated at 5.8 ML on the Richter scale, intensity at VII EMS-98. [1] | |
1842 Cuba earthquake | Santiago de Cuba [1] | 6.0 | VII | 30 km | Magnitude estimated at 6.0 ML on the Richter scale, intensity at VII EMS-98. [1] | ||
1852 Cuba earthquake | 14:05 UTC | 1852-08-20Santiago de Cuba [10] [12] | 7.2 MI [3] | IX | 30 km | Intensity estimated at IX EMS-98, [1] with 26 heavy aftershocks. Caused severe damage to churches and other buildings in Santiago de Cuba, as well as landslides in the Sierra Maestra region. Shaking felt in the whole of eastern Cuba, up to the islands of Jamaica and Hispaniola. [13] | |
1852 Cuba earthquake (November) | 08:37 GMT | 1852-11-26Santiago de Cuba, Sierra Maestra [1] [14] | 7.0 | VIII | 35 km | ||
1858 Cuba earthquake | 22:04 | 1858-01-28Santiago de Cuba [1] | 6.5 | VII | 30 km | ||
1880 Cuba earthquake | 04:39 | 1880-01-23San Cristóbal/Vuelta Abajo (Pinar del Río) [1] [15] [16] | 6.0 | VIII | 15 km | A series of severe shock waves originating from western Cuba were also felt in the town of Key West (Florida), and included a strong earthquake on 23 January 1880 in San Cristóbal, Pinar del Río at 4 a.m. [16] | |
1903 Cuba earthquake | 08:09 | 1903-09-22Santiago de Cuba [1] | 5.7 | VII | 30 km | ||
1906 Cuba earthquake | 07:09 | 1906-06-22Santiago de Cuba [1] | 6.2 | VII | 30 km | ||
1914 Cuba earthquake | 05:19 | 1914-02-28Gibara [1] | 6.2 | VII | 32 km | ||
1914 Cuba earthquake | 05:19 | 1914-12-25Santiago de Cuba [1] | 6.7 | VII | 30 km | ||
1932 Cuba earthquake | 20°00′00″N75°48′00″W / 20.000°N 75.800°W Santiago de Cuba [17] | 6.75 mb [3] | VIII | Intensity estimated at VIII EMS-98. [1] 8 [17] – 1500 [18] deaths, 300 injured. 80% of buildings in Santiago de Cuba affected., [17] with damage totaling 15 million Pesos. [13] | 8 | ||
1947 Cuba earthquake | 00:40:20 UTC | 1947-08-07 19°45′N75°19′W / 19.75°N 75.32°W | 6.8 | VIII | 50 km | Magnitude estimated at 6.8 ML and intensity VIII EMS-98. [1] | |
1992 Cuba earthquake | 16:55:04 UTC | 1992-05-25 19°36′47″N77°52′19″W / 19.613°N 77.872°W Cabo Cruz, Pilón – Manzanillo [20] | 6.9 Ms [21] | VII | 23 km | A strong earthquake struck the Cabo Cruz sector, leaving 40 people injured and more than 820 buildings damaged in the Pilon-Manzanillo area. [22] | - |
2020 Caribbean earthquake | 2020-01-28 14:10 UTC | 19.419°N 78.756°W Caribbean Sea | 7.7 Mw | VI | 14.9 km | One house collapsed and more than 300 were damaged. [23] | - |
2024 Cuba earthquake | 2024-11-10 16:49 UTC | 19.419°N 78.756°W Bartolomé Masó, Granma | 6.8 Mw | VII | 14.0 km | - | - |
Intensity= Intensity on the European macroseismic scale (EMS-98), which is somewhat similar to the Modified Mercalli scale (MM)
An earthquake – also called a quake, tremor, or temblor – is the shaking of the Earth's surface resulting from a sudden release of energy in the lithosphere that creates seismic waves. Earthquakes can range in intensity, from those so weak they cannot be felt, to those violent enough to propel objects and people into the air, damage critical infrastructure, and wreak destruction across entire cities. The seismic activity of an area is the frequency, type, and size of earthquakes experienced over a particular time. The seismicity at a particular location in the Earth is the average rate of seismic energy release per unit volume.
Seismology is the scientific study of earthquakes and the generation and propagation of elastic waves through the Earth or other planetary bodies. It also includes studies of earthquake environmental effects such as tsunamis as well as diverse seismic sources such as volcanic, tectonic, glacial, fluvial, oceanic microseism, atmospheric, and artificial processes such as explosions and human activities. A related field that uses geology to infer information regarding past earthquakes is paleoseismology. A recording of Earth motion as a function of time, created by a seismograph is called a seismogram. A seismologist is a scientist works in basic or applied seismology.
An intraplate earthquake is an earthquake that occurs in the interior of a tectonic plate, in contrast to an interplate earthquake on the boundary of a tectonic plate. It is also called an intraslab earthquake, especially when occurring in a microplate.
A blind thrust earthquake occurs along a thrust fault that does not show signs on the Earth's surface, hence the designation "blind". Such faults, being invisible at the surface, have not been mapped by standard surface geological mapping. Sometimes they are discovered as a by-product of oil exploration seismology; in other cases their existence is not suspected.
Megathrust earthquakes occur at convergent plate boundaries, where one tectonic plate is forced underneath another. The earthquakes are caused by slip along the thrust fault that forms the contact between the two plates. These interplate earthquakes are the planet's most powerful, with moment magnitudes (Mw) that can exceed 9.0. Since 1900, all earthquakes of magnitude 9.0 or greater have been megathrust earthquakes.
The Puerto Rico Trench is located on the boundary between the North Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea, parallel to and north of Puerto Rico, where the oceanic trench reaches the deepest points in the Atlantic Ocean. The trench is associated with a complex transition from the Lesser Antilles frontal subduction zone between the South American plate and Caribbean plate to the oblique subduction zone and the strike-slip transform fault zone between the North American plate and Caribbean plate, which extends from the Puerto Rico Trench at the Puerto Rico–Virgin Islands microplate through the Cayman Trough at the Gonâve microplate to the Middle America Trench at the Cocos plate.
The Okhotsk microplate is a proposed minor tectonic plate covering the Kamchatka Peninsula, Magadan Oblast, and Sakhalin Island of Russia; Hokkaido, Kantō and Tōhoku regions of Japan; the Sea of Okhotsk, as well as the disputed Kuril Islands.
The New Hebrides plate, sometimes called the Neo-Hebridean plate, is a minor tectonic plate located in the Pacific Ocean. While most of it is submerged as the sea bottom of the North Fiji Basin, the island country of Vanuatu, with multiple arc volcanoes, is on the western edge of the plate. It is bounded on the south-west by the Australian plate, which is subducting below it at the New Hebrides Trench. The Vanuatu subduction zone is seismically active, producing many earthquakes of magnitude 7 or higher. To its north is the Pacific plate, north-east the Balmoral Reef plate and to its east the Conway Reef plate.
The 2009 Swan Islands earthquake occurred on May 28 at 02:24:45 AM local time with a moment magnitude of 7.3 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of VII. The epicenter was located in the Caribbean Sea, 64 kilometres (40 mi) northeast of the island of Roatán, 19 miles northeast of Port Royal, Isla de Bahias, 15 miles northwest of Isla Barbaretta, and 130 kilometres (81 mi) north-northeast of La Ceiba. Three aftershocks followed the earthquake within magnitude 4 range.
The Enriquillo–Plantain Garden fault zone is a system of active coaxial left lateral-moving strike slip faults which runs along the southern side of the island of Hispaniola, where Haiti and the Dominican Republic are located. The EPGFZ is named for Lake Enriquillo in the Dominican Republic where the fault zone emerges, and extends across the southern portion of Hispaniola through the Caribbean to the region of the Plantain Garden River in Jamaica.
The Septentrional–Orient fault zone (SOFZ) is a system of active coaxial left lateral-moving strike slip faults that runs along the northern side of the island of Hispaniola where Haiti and the Dominican Republic are located and continues along the south of Cuba along the northern margin of the Cayman Trough. The SOFZ shares approximately half of the relative motion between the North American and Caribbean tectonic plates with the Enriquillo-Plantain Garden fault zone and Walton fault zone which run along the southern side of Hispaniola and aong the southern margin of the Cayman Trough. Both fault zones terminate at the Mid-Cayman Rise to the west. Some researchers believe that the Enriquillo-Plantain Garden fault zone and the SOFZ bound a microplate, dubbed the Gonâve Microplate, a 190,000 km2 (73,000 sq mi) area of the northern Caribbean Plate that is in the process of shearing off the Caribbean Plate and accreting to the North America Plate.
This is a list of different types of earthquake.
The geology of Cuba differs significantly from that of other Caribbean islands because of ancient 900 million year old Precambrian Proterozoic metamorphic rocks in the Santa Clara province and extensive Jurassic and Cretaceous outcrops.
At 02:10 PM local time (UTC-5) on 28 January 2020, an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.7 Mw struck the north side of the Cayman Trough, north of Jamaica and west of the southern tip of Cuba, with the epicenter being 80 miles (130 km) east-southeast of Cayman Brac, Cayman Islands, and 83 miles (134 km) north of Montego Bay, Jamaica. Schools in Jamaica, as well as corporate and public buildings in Miami, were evacuated after shaking was experienced in parts of the U.S. state of Florida, a region not typically thought of in-relation to seismic activity. Light shaking was also reported on the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. The quake was the largest seismic event in the Caribbean since 1946. A tsunami warning for the Caribbean Sea was initially issued by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, later being withdrawn.
The 1139 Ganja earthquake was one of the worst seismic events in history. It affected the Seljuk Empire and the Kingdom of Georgia, in modern-day Azerbaijan and Georgia. The earthquake had an estimated magnitude of 7.7 MLH, 7.5 Ms and 7.0–7.3 Mw. A disputed death toll of 230,000–300,000 resulted from this event, making it one of the deadliest earthquakes ever recorded.
The southern part of Cuba was struck by a major earthquake on 12 June 1766 at midnight local time. It had an estimated magnitude of 6.8 Ms and a maximum felt intensity of IX (destructive) on the MSK scale. Its epicenter was offshore, near Santiago de Cuba, with a focal depth of 25 km. Santiago de Cuba suffered the worst damage, although large areas of Cuba were affected. It was felt in both Havana (800 km) and on Jamaica (140 km). Between 34 and 40 people died and a further 700 were injured.
The 1706 Abruzzo earthquake, also known as the Maiella earthquake, occurred on November 3 at 13:00 CEST. The earthquake with a possible epicenter in the Central Apennine Mountains (Maiella), Abruzzo had an estimated moment magnitude of 6.6–6.84 Mw . It was assigned a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (Extreme), causing tremendous destruction in Valle Peligna. At least 2,400 people were killed.
The 1766 Marmara earthquake occurred on 5 August; the second major earthquake to strike the Sea of Marmara region of present-day Turkey that same year. Estimates of the earthquake's moment magnitude (Mw ) range between 7.4 and 7.6. The earthquake was caused by strike-slip movement along a segment of the North Anatolian Fault. There was further damage and casualties in the Sea of Marmara area which had been affected by another major earthquake in May 1766. The worst affected areas were Tekirdağ and Gelibolu.