EARTHQUAKEM6.6

M6.6 earthquake near Río Grande, Panama

Map: the earthquake near Río Grande, Panama, with plate boundaries

A magnitude 6.6 earthquake struck 12 km (7 mi) west of Río Grande, Panama on Friday, October 9, 2026 at 20:25 UTC, at a depth of 24 km (15 mi), according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Shallow quakes like this one shake the surface hardest. The nearest city of a million or more people is Panama City, Panama, about 253 km (157 mi) away.

USGS set its tsunami flag for this earthquake. The flag is set automatically for large earthquakes at sea and is not a warning. For official tsunami information, see tsunami.gov and your national warning center.

USGS’s PAGER impact estimate is YELLOW: some damage possible.

36 people reported feeling it to USGS “Did You Feel It?”.

MagnitudeM6.6
Depth24 km (15 mi)
Time (UTC)Oct 9 20:25
Location7.70°N 81.44°W
Nearest townRío Grande · 12 km
Energy120 kilotons TNT
Aftershocks M2.5+4
Tsunami flagSet (not a warning)
PAGER alertYELLOW
Felt reports36
See it on the live 3D globe →Watch live on YouTube🔔 Get alerts near you

Why here?

This earthquake struck about 68 km (42 mi) from the boundary between the Cocos and Nazca plates. Most earthquakes happen along plate boundaries like this one, where the pieces of Earth’s outer shell collide, pull apart or grind past each other. Stress builds up over years until the rock suddenly slips.

The red lines on the map are plate boundaries.

What kind of fault?

USGS’s analysis of the seismic waves shows it was an oblique earthquake: the fault slipped partly sideways and partly as one block pushed up over the other.

Shaking and impact

The strongest shaking USGS estimates was intensity 7 on the Modified Mercalli scale: very strong. About 450,331 people were exposed to moderate shaking or stronger (intensity 5 and up), including about 3,523 to very strong shaking or worse (7 and up). USGS’s PAGER system estimates it most likely caused no deaths (90 percent probability). Early estimates are revised as reports come in.

How strong was it?

Magnitude is logarithmic: each whole step releases about 32 times more energy. This magnitude 6.6 released roughly the energy of 120 kilotons of TNT, about 8 times the Hiroshima atomic bomb. That is about 7,900 times the energy of a magnitude 4.0, a quake people nearby feel but that rarely causes damage. The strongest earthquake ever recorded, magnitude 9.5 in Chile in 1960, released about 22,000 times more than this one.

Aftershocks

In the first 16 days after it, USGS recorded 4 smaller earthquakes of magnitude 2.5 or more within 100 km (62 mi). The largest was a magnitude 6.1 on October 12 at 23:20 UTC.

Outside the United States, USGS mainly lists quakes of about magnitude 4 and up, so smaller aftershocks there are undercounted.

Earthquake history here

Before this earthquake, USGS had recorded 109 earthquakes of magnitude 6 or larger within 300 km (186 mi) since 1900. The strongest:

Official details, updates and the shaking map: USGS event page.

See every earthquake on October 9, 2026 or earthquakes by day.

More from around the world