Powerful quake hits Panama, damages homes; canal operations normal

Powerful quake hits Panama, damages homes; canal operations normal. Reuters Published October 10, 2026 Updated October 10, 2026 12: 35am.

Key points

• The quake's epicentre was close to the rural community of La Pitaloza in a sparsely populated area of Herrera, near the Pacific coastline.
• In the capital, the service on two lines of the Panama City Metro was temporarily suspended for safety reasons, the operator remarked.
• While Chile's navy additionally issued a tsunami alert, the system additionally stated there was a tsunami threat to Hawaii.
• Panama was due to hold a national evacuation drill on Monday of next week to test the country's emergency response capabilities against earthquakes.
• It's just the two of us old folks here.

Notably, a 7.7 magnitude earthquake struck near the southern coast of Panama on Friday at a 12.6-km (7.8 miles) depth, according to the US Geological Survey, damaging some buildings but without affecting the critical Panama Canal trade waterway.

In Panama, where earthquakes of this magnitude are rare, television images indicated elderly residents reduced to tears in the streets as a series of weaker aftershocks rattled the country.

"We're scared. It's just the two of us old folks here. The house has cracked, and we're afraid it could fall on us, " remarked Ricardo Brown, 74, speaking by phone from the Las Minas area in Herrera province in southern Panama, where he observed the quake damaged a number of homes.

For context, the quake's epicentre was close to the rural community of La Pitaloza in a sparsely populated area of Herrera, near the Pacific coastline. Shaking was additionally felt as far as San Jose, the capital of neighbouring Costa Rica, according to a Reuters witness.

Omar Smith, who heads Panama's civil protection agency, informed local outlet Telemetro Reporta that impacts had been noted in Chitre, the capital of Herrera, and along the coast in Los Santos province.

Videos shared by newspaper La Prensa indicated the tower of a historic building had collapsed along with a number of balconies of a residential building in Penonome, a city regarding halfway between the epicentre and Panama City.

In the capital, the service on two lines of the Panama City Metro was temporarily suspended for safety reasons, the operator remarked. Nationwide, Panama's ministry of education ordered the closure of schools.

Notably, the impact prompted the US Tsunami Warning System to warn that hazardous tsunami waves were feasible along parts of the coasts of Panama, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Peru, Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador and Mexico within the next three hours.

For now, powerful quake hits Panama, damages homes; canal operations normal remains the part of the story worth watching, and further updates are likely as more details are confirmed.