Magnitude 6.5 DOMINICAN REPUBLIC REGION
2003 September 22 04:45:36 UTC
Preliminary Earthquake Report
U.S. Geological Survey, National Earthquake Information Center
World Data Center for Seismology, Denver
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Magnitude | 6.5 | |
| Date-Time |
Monday, September 22, 2003 at 04:45:36 (UTC) - Coordinated Universal Time Monday, September 22, 2003 at 12:45:36 AM local time at epicenter Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones |
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| Location | 19.85N 70.67W | ||
| Depth | 10.0 kilometers | ||
| Region | DOMINICAN REPUBLIC REGION | ||
| Reference |
NEAR Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic 40 km (25 miles) N of Santiago, Dominican Republic 165 km (105 miles) NNW of SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic 1170 km (730 miles) ESE of Miami, Florida |
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| Location Quality | Error estimate: horizontal +/- 3.4 km; depth fixed by location program | ||
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Location Quality Parameters |
Nst=278, Nph=278, Dmin=371.1 km, Rmss=0.96 sec, Erho=3.4 km, Erzz=0 km, Gp=34.4 degrees | ||
| Source | USGS NEIC (WDCS-D) | ||
| Remarks | One person killed at Puerto Plata, two people died of heart attacks at San Francisco de Macoris, 15 people injured, many buildings destroyed or damaged in the Puerto Plata-Santiago area. Communications systems damaged, landslides on several highways in the epicentral area. Felt throughout the Dominican Republic. Also felt in western Puerto Rico. |
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Tectonic Summary
The earthquake occurred on the diffuse boundary of the Caribbean and North American plates. The Caribbean plate moves to the east with respect to the North American plate at about 2 cm/y. The plate boundary in the Dominican Republic is oriented slightly oblique to the direction of relative plate-motion. The boundary in this region includes major strike-slip faults that accommodate plate-motion that is parallel to the boundary and also dip-slip faults that accommodate plate motion that is perpendicular to the boundary. The moment-tensor solution of the September 22 earthquake implies that it occurred as the result of dip-slip faulting. |
NB:
The region name is an automatically generated name
from the Flinn-Engdahl (F-E) seismic and geographical regionalization scheme.
The boundaries of
these regions are defined at one-degree intervals and therefore differ from
irregular political boundaries.
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