A magnitude 4.7 earthquake struck 6 km southeast of Pitaloza Arriba, Panama, at 13:42 UTC on Thursday, October 29, 2026, which was 8:42 in the morning local time. Two people filed felt reports with the U.S. Geological Survey, and the agency rated the shaking at a weak 3.4 on its community intensity scale.
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Nobody has reported damage. The quake matters mostly because of where it happened, in the same corner of the country that was shaken by a far larger earthquake three weeks earlier.
Two felt reports and a reviewed USGS location
The USGS earthquake feed for October 29 and 30 records the Pitaloza Arriba event at depth 10 km, with a tsunami flag of zero and a “reviewed” status that means an analyst has checked the automatic location. Its felt count is two, and the community intensity of 3.4 is an average of what those respondents described. An intensity near 3 usually means hanging objects swing and people indoors notice a vibration like a passing truck. A response from two people is far too small a sample to map the area of shaking, so the claim that people felt it rests on a thin but real set of reports.
The event page for the quake lists the same epicentre. The measurement scale is mb, a body-wave magnitude that agencies commonly use for moderate quakes recorded at distant stations, and other agencies, such as the University of Panama’s geosciences institute, may publish a different figure from local instruments.
A sequence that opened on October 9
Three weeks before this quake, on Friday, October 9, 2026, a much stronger shock hit the Azuero peninsula at 12:56 local time. MercoPress reported a magnitude of 7.7 from the USGS and building damage in several provinces, with Panamanian authorities not yet confirming any casualties as inspections continued. Colombia’s national geological service first called it magnitude 7.3, then updated to 8.0. The University of Panama’s geosciences institute settled on 7.5 at a depth of only 4 km, a figure repeated in a later Pan American Health Organization situation report.
Cambio Colombia reported that the Colombian service placed the October 9 epicentre near Pitaloza Arriba itself, the same village named in the location of the October 29 event. Sinaproc director Omar Smith gave Panamanian broadcaster TVN the first damage report, and President José Raúl Mulino urged calm while asking for an assessment from Sinaproc and the Ministry of Government. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center issued a threat message for nine countries, while Colombia’s maritime authority, Dimar, ruled out a threat to its own Pacific coast within about five minutes.
By October 12, Primicias reported that more than 400 aftershocks had been recorded in Panama, including a magnitude 6.1 shock that evening 18 km west of Río Grande, off Coiba Island. The same report counted more than 2,000 people displaced and about 900 homes and 400 schools affected, mainly in Los Santos, Herrera, Coclé and Veraguas.
Agencies did not agree on the size of that October 12 aftershock either. The same Primicias report notes that the University of Panama’s institute logged a magnitude 6.4 at the same hour, 32 km southwest of Soná on the Azuero peninsula, against the 6.1 the USGS published, and it makes no attempt to reconcile the two. Differences of that kind are common in the first days of a sequence, when stations are saturated and automatic solutions are revised, and they are the reason a single 4.7 figure from one agency should be read as a good estimate and not a final one.
Where a 4.7 sits in a busy two days
The Pitaloza Arriba quake was one of 29 earthquakes of magnitude 4.6 or greater in the USGS feed for the two-day window, a list that runs from a magnitude 6.4 shock southeast of Easter Island down to several at 4.6. At 4.7 it ranks near the bottom, tied with events off Poland and Greece. A 6.2 quake 142.8 km deep beneath Vanuatu produced five felt reports, and a 4.8 event near Guam drew ten, more than any other in the list, which shows that felt counts follow population and depth rather than magnitude alone.
The USGS record does not call the October 29 quake an aftershock, and it does not need to for the pattern to be plausible. A region that has just released a magnitude 7-class rupture along a shallow fault keeps adjusting for weeks to months. The agency attaches no label of cause or sequence to the entry, so the link to October 9 is a matter of geography and timing rather than a classification.
Nothing in the sources available overnight says whether Panamanian authorities issued any statement about the October 29 shock. The PAHO situation report dated October 18 covers the earlier quake’s damage to health facilities, noting that 219 had been reviewed in the affected areas, and gives no figure for deaths. Whether the October 29 event is counted into the aftershock total that the University of Panama’s institute maintains is the detail still unconfirmed.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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