The Dominican Republic experienced a cluster of low-intensity seismic activity on Wednesday, when nine minor earthquakes were detected across the island nation by the National Seismological Center, operated by the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo (UASD).
According to the center’s official report, the magnitudes of these tremors fell between 2.2 and 3.5 on the Richter scale. The most powerful of the nine events, registering a 3.5 magnitude, struck just after noon local time in waters southwest of Saona Island. Other seismic events were pinpointed in regions near Catalina Island, San Pedro de Macorís, Miches, Hato Mayor, Sabana Grande de Palenque, Guayubín, and Los Hidalgos, covering both coastal and inland areas of the country.
Geologists noted that the majority of the recent seismic activity originated offshore, in the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, though a small number of tremors were recorded on land. As of Wednesday evening, no official reports of structural damage or bodily harm caused by the cluster of earthquakes had been released by local emergency management agencies.
This new sequence of minor tremors comes less than seven days after a stronger magnitude 5.1 earthquake hit the region on June 26. That earlier event was felt across large swathes of the Dominican Republic, triggering precautionary evacuation protocols at multiple public facilities across the country as a safety measure.