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Puerto Rico Declares State Of Emergency After Quake Rocks Residents Awake

Businesses and homes were severely damaged in the town center of Guanica, Puerto Rico, after an earthquake on Tuesday. The quake, just the latest in a series of temblors to hit the region, crumbled walls and destroyed houses.
Christopher Gregory for NPR
Businesses and homes were severely damaged in the town center of Guanica, Puerto Rico, after an earthquake on Tuesday. The quake, just the latest in a series of temblors to hit the region, crumbled walls and destroyed houses.

Updated at 4:20 p.m. ET

People across southern Puerto Rico awoke to find broken brick walls and felled power lines Tuesday, after a 6.4 magnitude earthquake struck before dawn. The major temblor hit a coastal stretch near the communities of Ponce and Guanica at about 4:24 a.m. local time, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

The quake, just the latest in a series of temblors to hit the region, crumbled walls, destroyed houses and knocked out most of the island's power after an automatic protection system kicked in, shutting down all of Puerto Rico's power plants.

Luis Martínez Torres and his family of six evacuated their home in Guanica on Tuesday. The foundation showed signs of cracking and all of their belongings were violently thrown around the house.
/ Christopher Gregory for NPR
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Christopher Gregory for NPR
Luis Martínez Torres and his family of six evacuated their home in Guanica on Tuesday. The foundation showed signs of cracking and all of their belongings were violently thrown around the house.

At least one person died Tuesday in the city of Ponce, after one of the walls of his home fell on him, according to Puerto Rican officials. At least eight other people were also injured because of the earthquake.

Puerto Rico's governor, Wanda Vázquez, declared a state of emergency Tuesday morning, activating the National Guard and facilitating the flow of funds to the emergency response. She has also requested a disaster declaration from the White House — a request supported by Puerto Rico's representative to Congress, Jenniffer González, and Florida's senators, Rick Scott and Marco Rubio.

Business were damaged in a shopping center in Yauco, Puerto Rico, among the communities struck by a 6.4 magnitude earthquake early Tuesday.
/ Christopher Gregory for NPR
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Christopher Gregory for NPR
Business were damaged in a shopping center in Yauco, Puerto Rico, among the communities struck by a 6.4 magnitude earthquake early Tuesday.

"We have not been exposed to this kind of emergency in 102 years," Vázquez said at a news conference Tuesday, referring to the 1918 earthquake and tsunami that killed scores of people in western Puerto Rico.

A tsunami warning issued shortly after Tuesday's earthquake was canceled later in the morning.

The unpleasant wake-up call represents just the latest jolt for Puerto Rico, where a 5.8 magnitude temblor hit the same area Monday morning. Residents have now found their lives disrupted and their buildings damaged in a series of earthquakes over roughly the past two weeks.

A U.S. Geological Survey map shows a flurry of earthquakes have hit Puerto Rico's southwest coast in the past day. Guayanilla, Ponce and other cities are reporting collapsed buildings from the quakes.
/ USGS
/
USGS
A U.S. Geological Survey map shows a flurry of earthquakes have hit Puerto Rico's southwest coast in the past day. Guayanilla, Ponce and other cities are reporting collapsed buildings from the quakes.

"The past several weeks, we've had hundreds of small earthquakes in the same region," explains John Geiger, a geophysicist with the USGS. "It began on Dec. 28, when we had a 4.7 magnitude [earthquake] there. Since the 4.7, we've had over 400 magnitude 2+ earthquakes."

As common as the quakes have been recently, the strength of Tuesday's temblor and its aftershocks — which reached a magnitude of 6.0 — nevertheless represented a shock to the residents who felt it.

A firefighter searches a building that was severely damaged in Guanica after Tuesday's earthquake.
/ Christopher Gregory for NPR
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Christopher Gregory for NPR
A firefighter searches a building that was severely damaged in Guanica after Tuesday's earthquake.

"I've never been so scared in my life," one resident of Ponce, Nelson Rivera, told The Associated Press after fleeing his home near the epicenter of the quake. "I didn't think we would get out. I said: 'We'll be buried here.' "

Tuesday's earthquake comes just a day after a major earthquake toppled a local landmark, a natural rock archway along the coast known as Punta Ventana. The tourist attraction collapsed into the Caribbean Sea amid the tremors, though no serious injuries were reported in that incident.

The pre-dawn earthquake on Tuesday crumbled the walls of some local buildings in Ponce and along a stretch of the southern coast of Puerto Rico.
Carlos Giusti / AP
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AP
The pre-dawn earthquake on Tuesday crumbled the walls of some local buildings in Ponce and along a stretch of the southern coast of Puerto Rico.

NPR's Adrian Florido contributed to this report.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Bill Chappell
Bill Chappell is a writer and editor on the News Desk in the heart of NPR's newsroom in Washington, D.C.
Colin Dwyer
Colin Dwyer covers breaking news for NPR. He reports on a wide array of subjects — from politics in Latin America and the Middle East, to the latest developments in sports and scientific research.