Unnerved Panamanians sleep in streets as aftershocks rattle quake-hit towns

LA VILLA DE LOS SANTOS, Panama (AP) — Unnerved residents of rural Panama awoke Saturday on the streets as the aftershocks of two powerful earthquakes that roiled the country shook their communities for hours.

The 7.7- and 6.6-magnitude earthquakes toppled buildings near the epicenter and prompted evacuations across the Central American country. Seismologists at the University of Panama recorded dozens of aftershocks, including ones measuring magnitude 5.8, 5.5 and 5.2.

The earlier quake, felt as far away as neighboring Colombia , was centered about 10 kilometers (6 miles) southwest of the remote community of Pitaloza Arriba, in the central province of Herrera, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. It struck at a depth of 10 kilometers (6 miles).

Panamanian authorities had not attributed any deaths to the earthquakes.

In La Villa de Los Santos, a colonial-era community about 40 miles (64 kilometers) northeast of the epicenter, homes and a historical Catholic church collapsed. People who spent the night on the streets were waiting for the government's guidance on what to do next.

"We’ve been here since 1 p.m. yesterday; we haven’t moved," Tony Jiménez, whose home partially collapsed, said while sitting with relatives under a tent. “It was a terrible thing. I can tell you with absolute certainty that in my 90 years, I had never experienced anything like it. It was intense—truly intense.”

Images of crumbling buildings and deep fissures slicing through roads added to fears across a region battered by a series of devastating earthquakes in recent months.

Two back-to-back 7.2 and 7.5 magnitude earthquakes roiled Venezuela’s La Guaira state in June , killing more than 6,500 people and leaving 17,000 homeless. In August, a 7.4 magnitude earthquake in Colombia killed at least 289 people .

The notably lower toll in nearby Panama may have been due to the country's strict building codes, especially governing construction of skyscrapers in the capital, said Carlos Valdés, head of the Seismology Department at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

Omar Smith of the National Civil Protection Service said that damage was concentrated in the central provinces of Veraguas, Herrera and Los Santos. He said there were no reports of damage in Panama City.

Smith said several injuries have been reported, including one person struck by debris from a partially collapsed structure in the city of Penonomé, around 150 kilometers (93 miles) from the capital. He confirmed a partial collapse and cracks at the cathedral in the district’s main square, as well as damage to the governor’s office building and the Dos Continentes hotel.

The Church of San Atanasio in La Villa de Los Santos collapsed. It was declared a National Historic Heritage Site in 1938. Elsewhere, including in Veraguas province, large fissures ran along roadways.

Tocumen International Airport in Panama City, one of the region’s busiest airports with more than 20 million passengers in 2025, temporarily suspended operations after the first quake but said Friday afternoon that it was reopening.

The Panama Canal Authority said operations were continuing normally along the global trade route. It said its priority was the safety of employees, vessels and crews and that specialized technical teams were inspecting facilities for possible damage.

The last major earthquake to cause widespread damage in Panama struck in 1991. A magnitude 7.4 quake, centered in nearby Costa Rica, killed 23 people, injured 559 and left thousands of people homeless in the border Bocas del Toro region.

Earthquakes are common, especially along Panama's border with Costa Rica and its Pacific coast, because of the interaction of several tectonic plates, including the Cocos, Nazca and Caribbean plates.

Panama lies along the “Ring of Fire,” a 40,000-kilometer (25,000-mile) arc of volcanoes and fault lines around the Pacific Basin, where most of the world’s earthquakes occur.

Janetsky reported from Mexico City, and Zamorano y Solís reported from Panama City. Associated Press writers Regina Garcia Cano and María Verza in Mexico City; Clara Preve in Buenos Aires, Argentin; Gabriela Molina in Quito, Ecuador; Eléonore Hughes in Rio de Janeiro; and Becky Bohrer in Juneau, Alaska, contributed to this report.

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