4.8 earthquake strikes Trinidad & Tobago; 2nd in 24 hours

(Trinidad Guardian) A shal­low mag­ni­tude 4.8 earth­quake struck 113 kilo­me­tres west of Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and To­ba­go at a depth of 10 kilo­me­tres at 10.25 pm Fri­day.

The earth­quake was wide­ly re­port­ed across parts of north­west­ern Trinidad, with a few re­ports across Cen­tral Trinidad.

 
This is the sec­ond felt quake to rock the is­land with­in the past 24 hours, fol­low­ing a mag­ni­tude 4.2 earth­quake at 12:55 pm Fri­day. The first quake oc­curred 104 kilo­me­tres west of Port-of- Spain at a depth of 10 kilo­me­tres.

Earth­quakes in this re­gion are com­mon. Gen­er­al­ly, across the East­ern Caribbean, a seis­mi­cal­ly ac­tive area, earth­quakes of this mag­ni­tude, up to M8.0 and greater, ac­cord­ing to seis­mol­o­gists at the UWI Seis­mic Re­search Cen­tre.

Each year, over 2,200 seis­mic events are record­ed in the East­ern Caribbean. On av­er­age, the East­ern Caribbean has seen a pat­tern of ma­jor (M7.0-M7.9) quakes every 20 to 30 years. That pat­tern has stayed true. The last ma­jor (M7.0-7.9) quake oc­curred north of Mar­tinique in 2007.