CANGREJAL, Costa Rica — A powerful, magnitude-7.6 earthquake shook Costa Rica and a wide swath of Central America on Wednesday, collapsing some houses, blocking highways and causing panic and at least one death from a heart attack.
Costa Rica President Laura Chinchilla announced there were no reports of major damage and called for calm.
At the epicenter, the beach town of Cangrejal, Jairo Zuniga, 27, said everything in his house fell when the quake hit at 8:42 a.m. local time.
“It was incredibly strong,” he said. “I’ve felt earthquakes, but this one was ‘wow.’ “
The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake was centered about 38 miles from the town of Liberia and 87 miles west of the capital, San Jose, where frightened people ran into the streets.
Local residents said the quake shook for about 30 seconds and was felt as far away as neighboring Panama and Nicaragua.
Officials initially warned of a possible tsunami. Local police supervisor Jose Angel Gomez said about 5,000 people — 80 percent of the population — had been evacuated from coastal towns in the Samara district west of the quake’s epicenter. But by mid-day, they were allowed to return.
In Costa Rica, one man died of a heart attack caused by fright, said Carlos Miranda, a Red Cross worker in the city of Liberia.
Douglas Salgado, a geographer with Costa Rica’s National Commission of Risk Prevention and Emergency Attention, said a landslide hit the main highway that connects the capital of San Jose to the Pacific coast city of Puntarenas, and hotels and other structures suffered cracks in walls.
Rosa Pichardo, 45, who lives in Samara, was walking on the beach with her family when the quake hit.
“When we felt the earthquake, we held onto each other because we kept falling,” Pichardo said. “I’ve never felt anything like this. We just couldn’t stay standing. … It was terrible, terrible.”
In the town of Hojancha a few miles from the epicenter, city official Kenia Campos said the quake knocked down some houses and landslides blocked several roads.
“So far, we don’t have victims,” she said. “People were really scared. … We have had moderate quakes, but an earthquake (this strong) hadn’t happened in more than 50 years.”
In the past four decades, the region has been rocked by 30 earthquakes magnitude-6 and larger. Two were larger than magnitude-7 — in 1978 and 1990 — but did not cause any deaths.
