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Magnitude 7.7 Quake Hits Near Cuba; Miami Offices Evacuated

Magnitude 7.7 Earthquake Hits Near Cuba; Miami Offices Evacuated

(Bloomberg) -- A magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck south of Cuba, triggering evacuation warnings across the Caribbean and sending office workers fleeing in Miami’s financial district.

The quake struck at 2:10 p.m. ET between Cuba and Jamaica, with an epicenter 10 kilometers (6 miles) beneath the surface, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Two hours later after the quake, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said the tsunami threat had passed.

Quakes of this size are “pretty rare” in the Caribbean, Don Blakeman, a geophysicist at the USGS, said in a phone interview, adding that aftershocks are likely.

Over the last hundred years, only five other earthquakes of magnitude 6 or higher have occurred within 400 kilometers of today’s epicenter, Blakeman said in a phone interview.

Offices Evacuated

In Miami’s Brickell financial district, thousands of people streamed out of office buildings into the streets below where police directed traffic as buildings were inspected for any signs of damage.

Workers evacuated the Bank of America building at 701 Brickell Ave. and the nearby Wells Fargo Center in downtown Miami, and yellow caution tape blocked re-entry to the BofA tower.

“Everybody felt it in the top floors,” said Juan Arango, 40, who works for Wells Fargo & Co. “To feel a tremor in Miami is unheard of.”

There were no immediate reports of damage in Jamaica, the Prime Minister’s office said in a statement. The Miami Herald said there were no immediate signs of damage in Havana either.

--With assistance from Michael McDonald and Jonathan Levin.

To contact the reporters on this story: Ezra Fieser in Bogota at efieser@bloomberg.net;Matthew Bristow in Bogota at mbristow5@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Juan Pablo Spinetto at jspinetto@bloomberg.net, Walter Brandimarte

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