By: Staff Writer
November 14, 2023
A 5.2 Earthquake hit the northwest Dominican Republic near the border with Haiti last week Friday, which observers are calling the strongest one to hit the DR this year.
The tremor occurred at a depth of 12 miles just west-northwest of Las Matas de Santa Cruz, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
Geologist engineer Osiris de León noted that this was the strongest earthquake felt in the country so far this year. Reports from social media users indicated that the tremor was “very strong” in some areas of Cibao and Greater Santo Domingo. As a precautionary measure, some people evacuated buildings.
The European Mediterranean Seismological Centre (EMSC) had earlier pegged the earthquake at a magnitude of 5.9 before revising it to 5.3.
The island of Hispaniola, which is home to both The DR and Haiti, has seen its fair share of earthquakes over its history and none more striking than the 7.0 quake that hit the Haitian side of the island on January 12, 2010, killing up to 316,000 people.
There was also a second 7.2 quake that hit Haiti on August 14, 2021, leaving at least 2,400 dead.
Haiti sits on a fault line between huge tectonic plates, big pieces of the Earth’s crust that slide past each other over time. These two plates are the North American plate and the Caribbean plate.
Additionally for the DR, there are two main fault lines, the Septentrional Fault Zone, which runs through the country, and the Hispaniola trench. The second is the more dangerous and, thankfully, lies offshore, where it is unlikely to cause any real damage.
The Septentrional-Orient fault zone (SOFZ) is a system of active coaxial left lateral-moving strike slip faults that runs along the northern side of the island of Hispaniola where Haiti and the DR are located and continues along the south of Cuba along the northern margin of the Cayman Trough.
The Enriquillo–Plantain Garden fault zone (EPGFZ or EPGZ) is a system of active coaxial left lateral-moving strike slip faults which runs along the southern side of the island of Hispaniola. The EPGFZ is named for Lake Enriquillo in the Dominican Republic where the fault zone emerges, and extends across the southern portion of Hispaniola through the Caribbean to the region of the Plantain Garden River in Jamaica.