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Can anyone tell me how frequent earthquakes are in Costa Rica and how bad the damage has been from them in the past. I just watched a documentary about Tsunami’s which mentioned that Costa Rica is at risk of them and that there was one that affected Guanacaste in 1992. Can anyone give me some info.
Tsunamis can occur on any ocean coast in the world. As far as I know the two factors which make them worse are proximity to oceanic epicenters, particularly where major plates collide, and how open that part of the coast is to the sea where those epicenters occur. Central America, like California, are especially vulnerable because of the Cocos Plate and the Juan de Fuca Plate, respectively, both of which slip against the major Pacific Plate off the west coast. Want to live on the beach? Ya’ pays your money and ya’ takes your chances…
Earthquakes in Costa Rica aren’t too bad, even when they are. There are three reasons for this:
1. They happen a lot. This is good. They’re usually small, and it relieves pressure.
2. It’s not like Mexico City, which is built on an ancient lake bed. This type of foundation magnifies the shaking.
3. Anti-seismic construction standards in Costa Rica are excellent. I’m talking rebar sunk into the building foundations, tied into the walls, tied into the roof. They’re bomb shelters. The old wood homes fare well too, since there’s a lot of “give” in them. Bamboo has also proven to be very good in holding up during earthquakes. Furthermore, the taller commercial buildings have counterweights. That’s state of the art when they were built.
I was in San Jose during the 7.4 quake centered in Limón in 1991, and believe me, it was rockin’ & rollin’. Hardly any damage in San José, and even that was minor. One older concrete hotel fell in Limón, but the major damage was to bridges and railways. It took years for the bridges on the Caribbean coast to get rebuilt (they used temporary bridges in the meantime), and train service to Limón died for good that day. Only 54 deaths, about 10% of the number who died in the 6.9 quake in Kobe in 1995.
You get used to the small ones. But when a big one hits, even the small ones are unnerving for a while.
I worry more about the Irazú volcano. It has destroyed Cartago twice (that’s why they moved the capitol to San Jose), and there are a lot more people living there today. They say its cycle is every 30 years or so (but that’s a debated point), and the last time it blew its top was on the day John Kennedy visited on March 19, 1963. Cartago was again devastated, and acidic ash fell on San Jose for two years, corroding all those tin roofs.
Earthquake?
Hurricane?
Tornados?
Blizzards?Ah the choices, I think I’ll pick earthquake. See ya”ll in October.
Stay out of the earthquake prone areas. Try and live where there are no fault lines that could un-nerve you.
Get the USGS map of fault lines in Costa Rica:
https://www.welovecostarica.com/members/programs/fileinfo.cfm?id=8&action=display
Nice map. But the larger quakes are felt well beyond the faults shown. Anything 4.5 or above, even centered around the farthest reaches of the country (a whole 150 miles!), is felt pretty good in San Jose.
Another way to tell how bad the ground shakes in different areas is the number of adobe structures. Where there are few, there used to be more…
WE were up in the hills above Aluejala(sp?) last year when the 6.7 quake hit Parrita. Our little villa at the Xandari resort rocked and rolled pretty good, felt like it was going to slide down the mountain! I was comforted to remember two architects built and own the place, also there were after shocks right through breakfast. Overall there was little damage even in Parrita and the surrounding area.
There was an extensive article in the Tico Times last year regarding tsunamis. I apologize, but I can not reference the date of the article. The just of the article was that tsunamis do not pose much of a threat to Costa Rica because of how close a major undersea fault is to Costa Rica. Basically it was saying that even with a large underwater quake, there would not be sufficient distance for a tsunami to materialize. The world and nature is constantly changing, so one never knows……does one?
From what I have heard, Palo Seco suffered a “small Tsunami” in late June this year. It knocked down a lot of trees on the beach etc. Heard the beach looks horrible. We own concession property there and are waiting to see when we visit.
I believe what you are referring to that happened in Palo Seco was simply a storm surge that happened to several beaches along this area and the waves came in much further than usual. Those are common up and down the coast, but typically will have nothing to do with an earth quake or the causes of a tsunami. Tell me where your porperty is and I can try and take some pics and send them to you if you’d like.
I remember two incidents over the last few decades of “walls of water” that destroyed property and killed people, near Rivas Nicaragua, and in Parrita. I think the one in Rivas was a Tsunami, but I can’t remember whether the one in Parrita was or not.
I found an article from La Nación which backs up what dkt2u said. It was about a study by OVISCORI (Observatorio Vulcanológico y Sismológico de Costa Rica) in 1999 about the coming “big one” in Nicoya. It said that if it were centered in the ocean, even in high tide the tsunami would be only minimal.
I don’t understand this, because Banda Aceh was close to the epicenter.
All in all, you’re much more likely to get struck by lightning. Anyway, building codes do not permit construction that near the beach anymore.
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