Quake
A powerful earthquake rocked the eastern Caribbean on Thursday, sending office workers and shoppers on several islands fleeing into the streets. There were no immediate reports of injuries.
The earthquake which struck at 2 p.m. EST, with a magnitude of 7.4, was centered 26 miles southeast of Roseau, the capital of Dominica, where the shaking lasted for about 20 seconds.
The quake was felt hundreds of miles away in Puerto Rico to the west, and Venezuela and Suriname to the south.
Radio hosts at Radio Martinique said the earthquake caused some damage on the French island but did not give details. Listeners were urged to evacuate buildings.
"My house shook so hard I thought it was going to fall," said a caller who identified herself only as Fannie. "The door, the windows, everything shook."
The quake struck at a depth of 90 miles, according to the USGS Web site.
"I wouldn't expect major damage because the quake has some depth," said Don Blakeman, a geophysicist at the National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colo.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii said the quake was too deep to generate a destructive tsunami.
In Trinidad, the shaking sent workers streaming out of office towers into the streets of the capital, Port-of-Spain.
Thousands more ran outside in St. Maarten. Flight's at Princess Juliana International Airport were briefly suspended.
In Antigua, islanders said the shaking lasted about 30 seconds.
"I haven't felt one like that in a while," said Jessie Kentish, a resident of the capital, St. John's. "It was a long time."
The powerful temblor triggered a series of false quake alarms in California, with computers picking up energy coming out of the Caribbean and erroneously treating it as local seismic activity. The fake quakes began registering nine minutes after the Caribbean quake, USGS scientists said.
In September, a similar incident occurred when a massive earthquake struck off the Mariana Islands in the Pacific Ocean and triggered six false reports of quakes in California.