• Costa Rica escapes serious damage after huge quake

    Zoraida Diaz / Reuters

    Residents look at the ruins of the Bellavista Catholic Church in Bellavista, Costa Rica, after a 7.6 magnitude earthquake hit the Central American country on Wednesday.

    By NBC News wire services

    SAN JOSE, Costa Rica -- It appeared Thursday that Costa Rica escaped relatively unscathed from the powerful earthquake that hit the country Wednesday, sparking landslides and knocking down buildings without directly killing anyone.

    Striking a tourist region popular with Hollywood stars, Costa Rica's severest quake in over two decades sowed panic in the capital San Jose, disrupting power supplies and communications, and caused an entire hospital on the Pacific coast to be evacuated.

    Having briefly sparked tsunami warnings, the 7.6 magnitude earthquake was first thought to have claimed two lives, but the Red Cross later revised its estimate and said just one woman died in the quake when she suffered a heart attack.

    Later, after emergency services had delivered initial findings on the impact of the earthquake, President Laura Chinchilla said that no one had died as a result of it.

    "There weren't any lives lost or serious physical injuries as a result of the events this morning," she told a news conference in San Jose.

    When asked about the heart attack victim, Chinchilla said she did not believe the quake had caused the death.

    Costa Rican television is airing video that apparently shows violent shaking and rumbling caused a 7.6 magnitude earthquake that shook the country. Msnbc's Tom Roberts reports.

    Countries like Mexico, Colombia and Panama had offered Costa Rica assistance, but that didn't seem necessary because the extent of the damage appeared contained, Chinchilla added.

    The epicenter of the quake was in the northwestern province of Guanacaste, and split open tarmac roads, cracked gravestones and sent books tumbling off library shelves.

    20 injured as major earthquake damages Costa Rica coast

    The quake was relatively deep at 25 miles down and it is thought that mitigated the effect on the surface.

    "If it was a shallower event, it would be a significantly higher hazard," seismologist Daniel McNamara of the U.S. Geological Survey told The Associated Press.

    The area is a seismically active zone where the Cocos tectonic plate dives beneath the Caribbean plate. "All along the Pacific coast of Central America, you can expect fairly big earthquakes," McNamara added.

    Costa Rican television said 22 people were treated for injuries, but the Red Cross could not confirm this.


    Locals were shocked by the force of the earthquake, which was felt as far away as Nicaragua and Panama, and the biggest to hit Costa Rica since a 7.6 magnitude quake in 1991 left 47 dead. The last serious quake to hit Costa Rica was a 6.1 magnitude quake in January 2009, which killed 40 people. 

    "I was inside my car at a stop sign and all of a sudden everything started shaking. I thought the street was going to break in two," said Erich Johanning, a 30-year-old who works in Internet marketing in San Jose. "Immediately, I saw dozens of people running out of their homes and office buildings."

    Dozens of patients were transported out of the Monsenor Sanabria hospital just yards from the Pacific after the facade of the nine-storey building began to crumble during the quake, police from the port city of Puntarenas said.

    Local media said the building housed 218 patients and that all were relocated to other hospitals or sent home.

    Mel Gibson's house near epicenter
    Actor Mel Gibson owns a lush forest retreat at Playa Barrigona in Samara near the epicenter, which he recently put up for sale for $29.75 million. Guests to the 500-acre property have included Bruce Willis and Britney Spears.

    Esteban Moreno, of the national emergency services, said some buildings in the worst-hit areas had collapsed, though he added they were mostly older, and of poor quality.

    Whole communities in those parts were still without water and electricity, but those services should be restored again by midnight, Chinchilla told the news conference.

    Some 21 hotels reported minor damage such as broken windows and fallen objects in Guanacaste province and the north of the country, but none reported serious damage, said Alcides Mora, spokesperson for the Costa Rican Tourism Institute.

    Officials said landslides had blocked some roads and that damage was done to some homes in built-up areas in the Nicoya Peninsula on the Pacific coast.

    In the town of Nicoya, about 7 miles from the epicenter, Selenia Obando, a receptionist at the Hotel Curime, said the building was left without lights and power. A floor had collapsed in the hotel but there were no injuries.

    "It was horrible, like being in a blender going round and round," Obando said. "All the water sloshed out of the swimming pool. It's now about half full."

    Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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  • 20 injured as major earthquake damages Costa Rica coast

    AFP / Getty Images

    Patients at Calderon Guardia Hospital in San Jose are evacuated after a powerful  earthquake struck Wednesday near the Pacific coast of Costa Rica.

    By M. Alex Johnson and Ian Johnston, NBC News

    Updated at 10:57 p.m. ET: At least 20 people were injured Wednesday when a major earthquake hit northwestern Costa Rica, authorities said. The Red Cross said those numbers could rise as damage assessment teams reached more areas.

    Robert Bazell, Amy Jean Goodwin, Tom Lea, Miranda Leitsinger and Edgar Zuniga Jr. of NBC News contributed to this report. Follow M. Alex Johnson on Twitter and Facebook.

    The quake — initially rated at magnitude 7.9 but then revised by the the U.S. Geological Survey to 7.6 — struck at 10:42 a.m. ET at a depth of about 25 miles about 7 miles southeast of Nicoya. The town of 15,000 people is near the Pacific coast, about 90 miles from the capital, San Jose.

    Reports earlier in the day said three people had died -- two from heart attacks -- but Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla said the deaths were not caused by the quake. 

    Government buildings, including the National Assembly complex in San Jose, were under evacuation orders, the newspaper La Nacion reported. Thousands of youngsters were sent home from school as a precaution against aftershocks.

    The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center canceled tsunami warnings for Costa Rica, Panama and Nicaragua.

    Costa Rican television aired video apparently showinh violent shaking and rumbling caused a 7.6-magnitude earthquake that shook the country. MSNBC's Thomas Roberts reports.

    Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla Miranda met with the National Emergency Council and the International Committee of the Red Cross later in the morning. In a news conference monitored by NBC News, Chinchilla confirmed that several buildings had been damaged in the capital and called on residents of the western coast to remain calm.

    Power was out in Puntarenas, capital of the province of the same name, where Monsignor Sanabria Hospital was evacuated for a structural review amid visible signs of damage. A bridge over the Sucio River collapsed in the town of Sarapiqui, local media reported.

    Some roads were blocked by landslides, and the Red Cross said rescue teams were unable to reach some areas. 

    'Everybody is crying'
    The National Volcanological and Seismological Observatory at Universidad Nacional reported more than 60 aftershocks between magnitudes 2 and 4 in the hours after the quake.

    Jorge Marino Protti, a seismologist with the observatory, said the quake was the caused by subduction between the Cocos and Caribbean tectonic plates. It occurred generally beneath the Nicoya Peninsula, but "you can't specify an exact 'epicenter' because the rupture zone was so wide," Protti said in a briefing. 

    The shaking caused the peninsula to rise about a meter, he said.

    Victor Suniga, owner of another hotel, the Samara Tree House Inn, told NBC News that the quake was felt "very strongly."

    "Everyone ran from their businesses and homes into the street," he said. "It was frightening. But there have been no reports of damage. Power was shut down for safety but is now beginning to return."

    Erin Morris, a college English teacher in San Isidro de Heredia, near San Jose, said, "People are definitely shaken up here." 

    "We were in class when the building started rolling back and forth," Morris, 30, who is from South Carolina, told NBC News by email. "Everyone stopped talking and held still for what seemed like an eternity before we jumped into action and quickly exited the building. 

    "As I walked out of the classroom, I noticed all the buildings out of the window shaking back and forth," she said. "Everything was diagonal and skewed in the frame."

    Robert Torres, desk manager at the Hotel Rio Tempisque in Nicoya, said the quake was also felt there.

    "All businesses in the town have shut down for the day and sent their workers home. There was power in the area following the quake, but it has been turned off for safety checks," he told NBC News. He said he was unaware of any damage in Nicoya.

    Get the latest on the earthquake from breakingnews.com

    A map released by the U.S. Geological Survey shows the intensity of the earthquake Wednesday off the coast of Costa Rica.

    There were local media reports of serious damage to houses in the Santa Cruz area.


    The USGS said that "overall, the population in this region resides in structures that are vulnerable to earthquake shaking, though some resistant structures exist."

    "The predominant vulnerable building types are adobe block and mud wall construction," it said.

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  • Sea Shepherd activist Paul Watson skips $320,000 bail in Germany

    Odd Andersen / AFP - Getty Images, file

    Paul Watson, Canadian founder and president of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, has skipped bail in Germany, where he was facing possible extradition to Costa Rica on charges stemming from a high-seas confrontation over shark finning in 2002.

    By NBC News' Carlo Angerer and wire reports

    MAINZ, Germany -- Environmental activist Paul Watson has skipped bail in Germany, according to a court statement.

    The Canadian founder of the Sea Shepherd marine conservation group was arrested at the Frankfurt airport in May on a Costa Rican warrant that claimed he had endangered the crew of a fishing vessel.

    Watson was released days after his arrest on a $320,000 bail and ordered to report regularly to police. But he failed to check in with authorities and his attorney told the court that he had left the country for an undisclosed location.

    "Watson has not reported to the police since July 22," a spokesman for the public prosecutor's office in Frankfurt said. "We do not know where Watson is at the moment." 

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    The public prosecutor's office told NBC News that a nationwide search has been launched in case Watson is still in Germany. The prosecutor has also requested that the $320,000 bail be paid out to the German state.


    Watson is known for waging aggressive campaigns to protect whales, dolphins and other marine animals. 

    He had been awaiting possible extradition over the charges stemming from his campaign against shark fining, a practice that involves catching sharks, slicing off their fins and throwing them back into the sea, sometimes barely alive.

    Sea turned red with blood as Faroe Islanders hunt pilot whales

    After being freed on bail in May, Watson made a brief appearance in Berlin at a protest coinciding with a visit by Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla.

    Chinchilla has promised Watson a fair trial if he is extradited to her country.

    Anti-whaling activists and a Japanese whaling vessel squared off in a scuffle at sea. NBCNews.com's Dara Brown reports.

    Reuters contributed to this report.

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