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5.6 Earthquake Hits Cuba
HAVANA - An earthquake measuring 5.6 on the
Richter scale jolted the eastern Cuban
province of Guantanamo Saturday. But no
casualties have been reported so far.
The tremor, which occurred at 1808 GMT, was
centered 45 km southwest of Guantanamo and
had a depth of 22.6 km, the U.S. Geological
Survey said.
Nuria Martinez, a resident living in
Guantanamo, said she felt a strong ground
movement, but there seemed no damage to the
city's old colonial buildings.
"We felt that the earth shook for quite some
time. Perhaps it was about a minute, I do
not know," she said, adding that people had
run into streets, but they had since
gradually returned home.
Vehicles of the Civil Defense with
loudspeakers offered guidance to the
panic-stricken people, who were asked to
keep calm.
"People are scared because it was following
very recently the quake in Haiti," said
Jasmine Rodriguez, a teacher in Guantanamo.
She said cracked walls and broken windows
were seen at two city hospitals.
In the second most important city of the
island, Santiago de Cuba, about 50 km from
the epicenter, telephone communications were
partially disrupted by the quake.
The United States has a military base at
Guantanamo, where 188 terrorist suspects
were still being held at a detention center.
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