2008 Panama: Paso Canoa, David, Puerto Armuelles Earthquake
Overview
Western Panama's border zone with Costa Rica is one of the most tectonically complicated corners of the Americas, and the magnitude 6.1 earthquake of 19 November 2008 originated within it. The epicentre, 8.27 N, 82.97 W, lies near the towns of Paso Canoa, David, and Puerto Armuelles, where the Cocos and Nazca plates, the Caribbean plate, and the semi-independent Panama block all interact. The catalogue preserves no focal depth, no assigned Mercalli intensity, and no casualty or damage tally. Chiriqui province, which the epicentre straddles, combines this convergent setting with a dense agricultural population, and moderate shocks there are felt across the whole isthmus. Several magnitude 6 events have been catalogued for the border district since instrumental recording began.
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Energy Released
1.4 atomic bombs
About This Earthquake
2008 Paso Canoa, David, Puerto Armuelles, Panama: M6.1 at shallow depth. No fatalities reported. Central American subduction zone.
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Frequently Asked Questions
The largest earthquake ever recorded was the 1960 Valdivia earthquake in Chile, at magnitude 9.5. It generated a tsunami that traveled across the Pacific Ocean and caused damage as far away as Hawaii and Japan. The earthquake killed approximately 1,655 people and left 2 million homeless.
The deadliest earthquake in recorded history was the 1556 Shaanxi earthquake in China, estimated at magnitude 8.0-8.3, which killed approximately 830,000 people. Many casualties resulted from the collapse of yaodong (cave dwellings) carved into loess cliffs. The 2010 Haiti earthquake (M7.0, ~316,000 deaths) was the deadliest in modern times.
Pre-instrumental earthquake magnitudes are estimated from written accounts of damage, felt reports, geological evidence such as fault scarps and liquefaction features, and tsunami records. These methods provide approximate magnitudes with typical uncertainties of 0.3-0.5 magnitude units.
QuakeFYI's historical database covers earthquakes from approximately 2150 BC to the present, with over 5,700 significant events. Written records from ancient China, Greece, and the Middle East provide some of the earliest accounts. Instrumental recording began around 1900 with the first standardized seismographs.
An earthquake swarm is a sequence of many earthquakes occurring in a localized area over weeks to months without a clear mainshock. Unlike aftershock sequences where one large event is followed by smaller ones, swarms have no single dominant event. They are often associated with volcanic activity or fluid migration in the crust.