Shal­iza?Has­sanali

A 6.1 mag­ni­tude earth­quake yes­ter­day rocked T&T, with af­ter­shocks be­ing ex­pe­ri­enced as far as St Vin­cent and the Grenadines.

The earth­quake, which took place at 5.42 pm, was felt by cit­i­zens in Ari­ma, Ch­agua­nas, Port-of-Spain, Matelot, Ch­aguara­mas, San Fer­nan­do, Pe­nal and even neigh­bour­ing To­ba­go.

Al­though no one was re­port­ed in­jured, nor was there any in­fra­struc­tur­al dam­age, food items on the shelves of sev­er­al su­per­mar­kets across the coun­try, in­clud­ing Xtra Foods and West Bees in Diego Mar­tin, top­pled over with the earth­quake's pro­longed vi­bra­tions.

Ac­cord­ing to a Face­book post on the UWI Seis­mic Re­search Cen­tre page, the earth­quake's lo­ca­tion was 11.04 north lat­i­tude with 60.70 west lon­gi­tude at a depth of 29 km.

Yes­ter­day, many peo­ple took to Face­book af­ter­wards, say­ing they were sur­prised by the mag­ni­tude of the earth­quake. Oth­ers ad­mit­ted that the af­ter­shocks felt even stronger.

A fe­male em­ploy­ee of West Bees, who gave her name as Ms John­son, said they had to close the su­per­mar­ket af­ter a large quan­ti­ty of goods feel off shelves and scat­tered on­to the isles.

"The su­per­mar­ket is in a mess with items all over... some of them which were bro­ken.

"We had to close our doors. Our staff are in the process of repack­ing the shelves, which would take a while. This was the last thing we were ex­pect­ing," John­son said.

Cus­tomer ser­vice rep­re­sen­ta­tive at Xtra Foods Grand Bazaar San­dra Khan said the en­tire su­per­mar­ket shook, while a few items skat­ed off the shelves.

"For a long time I had not ex­pe­ri­enced such a pow­er­ful earth­quake. It was re­al­ly fright­en­ing."

She said some cus­tomers re­mained calm while oth­ers left in fear. But Khan said they did not see the need to close the su­per­mar­ket.

"A few of our work­ers picked up the goods that fell on the ground and place them back on the shelves. We con­tin­ued with busi­ness as usu­al," Khan said.

Last night, seis­mol­o­gist Dr Joan Latch­man said the mag­ni­tude we ex­pe­ri­enced was felt in To­ba­go back in 1997.

Asked if the earth­quake could have been pre­dict­ed, Latch­man said that was a big dis­cus­sion which she pre­ferred not to en­gage in.

How­ev­er, she said she was not sur­prised by the oc­cur­rence of the earth­quake and its mag­ni­tude. In the com­ing days and weeks, Latch­man said T&T should brace for sev­er­al af­ter­shocks.