UP­DAT­ED WED 5 SEP, 4.04 PM

Af­ter a pow­er­ful, mag­ni­tude-7.9 earth­quake shook Cos­ta Ri­ca this morn­ing, a tsuna­mi watch was in ef­fect for Trinidad and To­ba­go and sev­er­al Caribbean is­lands, but on­ly for a few min­utes.

The US Ge­o­log­i­cal Sur­vey (US­GS) said the 10:42 a.m. quake struck off the Cos­ta Ri­can shore. There were no im­me­di­ate ac­counts of dam­age or in­juries but it was felt as far away as Man­agua, the cap­i­tal of neigh­bor­ing Nicaragua.

Fol­low­ing the quake, at 10.47 am the Pa­cif­ic Tsuna­mi Warn­ing Cen­ter (PTWC) is­sued a tsuna­mi warn­ing for "coun­tries with­in and bor­der­ing the Caribbean Sea...ex­cept for Puer­to Ri­co and the Vir­gin Is­lands", ac­cord­ing to the PTWC web­site.

"A Caribbean-wide tsuna­mi watch is in ef­fect," the warn­ing said.

"Earth­quakes of this size have the po­ten­tial to gen­er­ate a wide­spread de­struc­tive tsuna­mi that can af­fect coast­lines across the Caribbean re­gion," it fur­ther stat­ed.

How­ev­er, three min­utes lat­er, the PTWC post­ed a sec­ond mes­sage that said, "The tsuna­mi watch for the Caribbean is can­celled be­cause it was meant for the Pa­cif­ic and was in­ad­ver­tent­ly sent to the Caribbean by mis­take. We apol­o­gise for any in­con­ve­nience this may have caused."

The PTWC is one of two tsuna­mi warn­ing cen­tres of the US Na­tion­al Ocean­ic and At­mos­pher­ic Ad­min­is­tra­tion (NOAA).