Days after a powerful magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck southeastern Panama, attention is turning from the immediate emergency response to a longer-term question: how safe are the country’s buildings, and is the regulatory framework designed to keep them that way actually being enforced?
What Happened
The earthquake, registered at magnitude 7.5 by Panama’s National Civil Protection System (Sinaproc) and 7.7 by the United States Geological Survey, struck on October 9 with its epicenter 39 kilometers northwest of Tonosí, in the province of Los Santos. According to the preliminary report from Sinaproc’s Emergency Operations Center (COE) as of 8:00 p.m. Friday, the quake caused damage across nine provinces and left 27 people with minor injuries. No deaths or missing persons were reported. The worst access problems were concentrated in Veraguas and Los Santos.
In the Azuero peninsula, church towers collapsed and homes were damaged, while some stretches of road suffered significant damage. In Panama province, the COE recorded minor damage to four horizontal-property buildings and to commercial premises.
Architect and urban planner Carlos Antonio Solís offered two readings of the event. On a preliminary basis, he said, the performance of skyscrapers, bridges and highways speaks well of the work of qualified professionals. But he cautioned that comparisons with Panama City, with its many high-rises, have limits, because the capital experienced an intensity of 5, not 7. He also noted that the capital sits near its own geological fault, the Pedro Miguel fault, which would truly test the country’s installed technical capacity if it ruptured.
Background
Panama’s seismic building standards have evolved over nearly five decades. In 1976, the Panamanian Society of Engineers and Architects published an anti-seismic code that carried no force of law. The first legal regulation, REP-84, was published in the Official Gazette on January 23, 1985. It was later updated in 1994, 2004 and 2014.
Each version strengthened requirements. The REP-84 did not require formal seismic design for single-family homes. The REP-94 introduced stricter rules for such constructions and calculated seismic coefficients using local earthquake data rather than California-based factors. The REP-2004 required new buildings taller than 15 floors or larger than 5,000 square meters to be fitted with sensors, which feed the Seismic Instrumentation Program at the Technological University of Panama (UTP) and help improve the standards, as engineer Ramiro Vargas explained in a recent article in La Prensa.
The 2014 version incorporated studies of the Limón and Pedro Miguel faults conducted during the Panama Canal expansion. The current code, the REP-2021, was adopted by the Board of Engineering and Architecture (JTIA) through Resolution 020-2022 and took effect on April 30, 2023. It draws on United States standards for steel and concrete.
What This Means for Panama
Both experts agree that a good structural regulation is not enough on its own. Solís pointed out that the REP governs only the design work of civil engineers, and that Panama still lacks a construction code governing how works are actually executed on site.
He also stressed the importance of urban planning: avoiding construction on hillsides, riverbanks, flood-prone zones or filled-in mangroves, citing landslides that have occurred in San Miguelito.
Vargas, a civil engineering professor at UTP, argues that compliance is the missing link, requiring competent professionals, adequate materials, effective supervision and enforcement. He noted that a large share of the population lives in houses built without technical supervision or with risky modifications.
Solís laid out key recommendations for anyone building: hire an architect and civil engineer credentialed by the JTIA rather than choosing the cheapest option; do not skimp on material quality, and ensure professionals inspect the work rather than leaving it solely in the hands of construction workers; maintain structures properly, noting that maintenance culture in Panama is almost nonexistent, in contrast to the former Canal Zone structures that remain standing after 50 to 100 years; and build on rock foundations with flexible designs, which perform better in earthquakes and strong winds than rigid structures. Vargas added that soil characterization is essential, since the same earthquake can produce very different effects depending on geotechnical conditions.
With 188 schools affected and damage reported to homes and hospitals, the October 9 earthquake has given Panama a detailed, real-world test of its building stock, and a clear signal of where its regulatory and supervisory systems still need reinforcement.
This story was originally reported by La Prensa.