A 5.4 mag­ni­tude earth­quake hit Ja­maica on Mon­day, prompt­ing peo­ple to flee build­ings amid heavy shak­ing.

The earth­quake was lo­cat­ed about 2 miles (4 kilo­me­ters) west-north­west of Hope Bay, ac­cord­ing to the U.S. Ge­o­log­i­cal Sur­vey. It oc­curred at a shal­low depth of 6 miles (10 kilo­me­ters).

There were no im­me­di­ate re­ports of dam­age or in­juries.

The earth­quake prompt­ed pan­ic on the is­land. Mem­bers at­tend­ing the In­ter­na­tion­al Seabed Au­thor­i­ty meet­ing that be­gan Mon­day could be see­ing flee­ing on cam­era be­fore the broad­cast cut off.

While small earth­quakes are com­mon in and around Ja­maica — some 200 a year — large ones are rare. The dev­as­tat­ing Port Roy­al earth­quake oc­curred in 1692, with a por­tion of the town sink­ing in­to the sea. Then in 1907, a quake struck the cap­i­tal, Kingston, killing more than 1,000 peo­ple. An­oth­er big quake was re­port­ed in March 1957, af­fect­ing most­ly west­ern Ja­maica, ac­cord­ing to the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies in Mona, Ja­maica.

The is­land sits atop the En­riquil­lo–Plan­tain Gar­den fault zone, which it shares with Haiti and the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, ac­cord­ing to the U.S. Ge­o­log­i­cal Sur­vey.

SAN JUAN, Puer­to Ri­co (AP)