Strong earthquake strikes north of Bahia de Caraquez, felt in much of the country

A powerful 6.0 magnitude earthquake, centered 19 kilometers north of Bahia de Caraquez, struck at 6:19 Sunday morning.

The quake was shallow, at a depth of 10 kilometers, with the epicenter close to that of the catastrophic April 2016 earthquake that killed hundreds in Manabi and Esmerladas Provinces.

As of 10:30 a.m., three aftershocks ranging up to 3.2 in magnitude had been recorded.

At midmorning Sunday, a Manabí Province emergency management official said there has been minor structural damage to some buildings in Bahia de Caraquez and San Vincente but that a full impact assessment would not be available until later in the day. He said power was out in several coastal locations.

Ecuador’s Geophysical Institute initially reported the earthquake had a magnitude of 6.5 on the Richter scale. The magnitude has been corrected to 6.0 to correspond to data from the U.S. Geological Survey and the German Geofon service.