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Unnerved Panamanians sleep in streets as aftershocks rattle quake-hit towns · Best of: Features

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  Panama declared a state of emergency as powerful quake aftershocks rattle communities.
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  Written by Eris Mariotta and Alma Solis. This article is being read
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  by an automated voice generated by Everlet. La Via de los Santos,
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  Panama's the AP. The government of Panama declared a state of emergency
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  Saturday as the aftershocks of Tue powerful earthquakes that roiled the country.
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  Shook communities for hours. Officials did not attribute any deaths to the
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  quakes but reported damages in all ten of Panama's provinces and Tou
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  indigenous territories. The 7.7 and 6.6 magnitude earthquakes on Friday
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  toppled buildings near the epicenter and prompted evacuations across the Central American
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  country. Seismologists recorded more than 100 aftershocks, including ones measuring magnitude
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  5.8, 5.5, and 5.2. The earlier quake, also felt in neighboring Colombia,
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  was centered about ten kilometers six miles, southwest of
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  the remote community of Pitaloza Ariba, in the central province of Herrera,
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  according to the US Geological Survey. It struck at a depth of
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  ten kilometers, six miles. Presidential Minister Juan Carlos Aurillac announced the emergency
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  during a news conference in The
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  capital, Panama City. He said homes schools, health care facilities, roads, and
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  hotels were among the damaged facilities. Militzi Rivera, Deputy Director of the
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  National Civil Protection System, told reporters the state had reports of twenty-seven
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  people with injuries, ranging from minor to moderate. Hundreds of homes were
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  damaged, and Most of the damage was concentrated in the central provinces
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  of Varaguas, Herrera, Cochola, and Los Santos. The Civil Protection Agency tallied
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  roughly four hundred and twenty homes, and about the same number of
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  public schools damaged. It also reported that seven hotels, at least thirteen
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  churches, and nine bridges were affected by the earthquakes. In La Villa
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  de Los Santos, a colonial era community about forty miles, sixty four
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  kilometers, northeast of the epicenter, homes and a historical Catholic church collapsed.
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  People who spent the night on the streets were waiting for the
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  government's guidance on what to do next. We've been here since one
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  PM yesterday. We haven't moved, Tony Jimenez, whose home partially collapsed, said
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  while sitting with relatives under a tent. It was a terrible thing.
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  I can tell you with absolute certainty that In my ninety years
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  I had never experienced anything like it. It was intense, truly intense.
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  The collapsed church of San Atenasio was declared a National Historic Heritage
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  Site in nineteen thirty eight. Images of crumbling buildings and deep fissures
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  slicing through roads added to fears across a Latin American region battered
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  by a series of devastating earthquakes in recent months. To back to
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  back, seven point two and seven point five magnitude earthquakes roiled Venezuela's
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  La Guerra State in June, killing more than six thousand five hundred
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  people and leaving seventeen thousand homeless. In August, a seven point four
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  magnitude earthquake in Colombia killed at least two hundred eighty nine people.
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  The notably lower toll in nearby Panama may have been due to
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  the country's strict building codes, especially governing construction of skyscrapers in the
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  capital, said Carlos Valdez, head of the Seismology Department at the National
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  Autonomous University of Mexico. Rising sea levels prompt evacuations. Officials
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  did not report any missing people on Saturday, but said some communities
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  remained cut off due to landslides and road damage. On Isla Cana,
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  off the Pacific coast of Los Santos, approximately three hundred people were
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  evacuated because of rising sea levels and rough surf. Meanwhile, in the
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  city of Panoname, around one hundred and fifty kilometers, ninety three miles
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  from the capital, a shelter was housing thirteen people, including five children.
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  The earthquakes caused a partial collapse and cracks at the cathedral in
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  the district's main square, as well as damage to the Governor's Office
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  Building and the Dos Continentes Hotel. In Panama City, one of the
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  water treatment plants supplying the area operated at twenty percent capacity on
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  Saturday, and tent facilities with COTS were set up at six hospitals.
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  Tacumen International Airport in Panama City, one of the region's busiest airports
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  with more than twenty million passengers in twenty twenty five, temporarily suspended
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  operations after the first quake, but said Friday but reopened hours later.
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  But hundreds of travelers on major Panama based airlines like Copa Airlines
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  were left stranded in airports around the region. Their connections through Tokumen,
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  one of the biggest travel hubs in the region, were cancelled or
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  delayed. In Mexico City's airport airline employees. Scrambled as families with babies
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  were sleeping on the floor Saturday, while one woman from Venezuela shouted
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  in panic that the flight through Panama was one of the only
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  ways she could return home to Caracas. The Panama Canal Authority said
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  operations were continuing normally along the global trade route. It said its
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  priority was the safety of employees, vessels and crews, and that specialized
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  technical teams were inspecting facilities for possible damage. The last major earthquake
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  to cause widespread damage in Panama struck in nineteen ninety one. A
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  magnitude seven point four quake centered in nearby Costa Rica killed twenty
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  three people, injured five hundred fifty nine, and left thousands of people
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  homeless in the border Bocos del Toro region. Earthquakes are common, especially
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  along Panama's border, with Costa Rica and its Pacific coast, because of
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  the interaction of several tectonic plates, including the Cocos, Nazca, and Caribbean
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  plates. Panama lies along the Ring of Fire, a forty thousand kilometer
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  arc of volcanoes and fault lines around the Pacific basin, where most
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  of the world's earthquakes occur. Countries offer help. Messages of support and
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  offers of assistance flooded in from across the region shortly after the
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  earthquakes. Mulino on Friday thanked fellow Latin American leaders for their support,
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  saying he had spoken with the presidents of Chile, Uruguay, and Guatemala,
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  among others. The U.S. Department of State on Saturday said it mobilized
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  a disaster response team to help local authorities with search and rescue
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  expertise as well as aerial and on-the-ground assessments. The U.S. Government also
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  pledged five million dollars for humanitarian assistance. U.S. Southern Command also said
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  two helicopters supported by the State Department's Drug Control Bureau had delivered
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  two thousand pounds of food to Panamanian communities affected by the
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  earthquakes. Solis reported from Panama City, Associated Press writers Meganetsky, Regina Garcia
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  Cano and Maria Versa in Mexico City, Juan Zamorano in Panama City,
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  Clara Preve in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Gabriela Molina in Quito, Ecuador, Eleanor
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  Hues in Rio de Janeiro, and Becky Boher in Juneau, Alaska contributed
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  to this report. Follow the AP's coverage of Latin America and the
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  Caribbean at