Posted on 01/29/2020 9:26:55 AM PST by sodpoodle
MIAMI A powerful magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck 86 miles northwest of Jamaica on Tuesday afternoon, sending seismic energy that could be felt throughout the northern Caribbean and as far as coastal Florida. The earthquake and ensuing aftershocks opened sinkholes on the Cayman Islands and swayed buildings from Jamaica to downtown Miami. Construction workers in Kingston kept laboring on a rooftop and schoolchildren took shelter under their desks as the ground shook. Mirrors vibrated in Sancti Spiritus, Cuba, where residents reported feeling such tremors for the first time in their lives. A man in the Bahamas thought he was having a heart attack. Hanging lamps in Miami skyscrapers swayed, leading some confused office workers to believe their lunches may have made them ill. Government offices closed early. As of Tuesday evening, there were no reports of loss of life from the earthquake. At 2:10 p.m. EST, a strong earthquake struck about six miles beneath the surface in the open water between Jamaica and Cuba with more force than the 2010 earthquake that devastated Haiti, a quake that occurred only 15 miles away from Port-au-Prince and left an estimated 316,000 dead. On Tuesday, residents of southern Haiti reported feeling tremors. Tuesdays earthquake struck along the border between the Caribbean and North American tectonic plates, a crack that stretches from Hispaniola to Guatemala. One scientist explained that both plates, massive slices of the earths surface, scraped each other as they moved in opposite directions. Its a slip plate fault like the San Andreas, said Grenville Draper, an earth sciences professor at Florida International University. North America moves a bit west and the Caribbean to the east.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
My niece is in England, but her husband and young daughter are in the Caymans. Scary stuff!!! An after shock of 6.6 is being reported on NBC.
Yikes! We’ll be cruising there starting Saturday.
(Sorry. I couldn't resist.)
“...leading some confused office workers to believe their lunches may have made them ill.”
I had an uncle who drank. He lived in Cal. We asked him if he felt the quake. He said, ‘I don’t know, I thought I was wobbly from drinking’
My young nieces and nephew were in a swimming pool when that quake hit.
They were swept from one end of the pool to the other.
They got out of the pool and were too scared to get back in.
Please! If I ever hear Shelley Winters scream again, I’ll go mad!
I feel so much better! Thanks for that. :)
And don’t call me Shirley!
You ever catch the anti-God message in the movie?
Don’t remember. I haven’t seen it in decades.
Bar sign: Todays drinks will be shaken, not stirred.
My sister was about to board a plane from the Caymens to Charlotte yesterday. Airport was evacuated, but got back to operations shortly. Her description of the quake was that the building rolled from side to side.
Do people on a large cruise ship feel anything if they are out at sea when a quake hits?
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