With the Turkey earthquake the leading international news story, local newspapers have focused on the possibilities of the DR suffering a similar experience. Seismic specialists alert that everyone should check out if their building was built meeting seismic regulations. Director of the Dominican Seismologic Institute, Juan Payero said that several buildings in the DR are at risk of collapsing as happened in Turkey. He says that those at most risk are two floor buildings on top of which an additional floor was built without taking into consideration the building’s structure. There are three major seismological systems in the island. The one to the north, running along the Cordillera Septentrional, places the cities of Samaná, San Francisco de Macorís, Moca and Monte Cristi the most vulnerable to quakes. Another fault runs through the South-Southwest, making Ocoa, San Juan and Enriquillo Lake areas vulnerable. A third, runs through the Caribbean Sea, in front of Santo Domingo. While one may take comfort that Santo Domingo does not lie directly on top of a fault, but seismologists alert that this does not eliminate the possibility of seismic waves drastically affecting the city from a distant epicenter. Santo Domingo’s big advantage is that it is built extensively on a rock foundation which provides a great deal of stability. Not so, the Cibao, where its soft soil is not compacted. The Dominican Seismologic Institute has been predicting that a major earthquake is due to shake the DR. The last earthquake of catastrophic dimensions wasin 1947, when the town of Matancitas in northeastern Nagua was destroyed by an earthquake that measured 8.1. On March 7, 1993, a shake in the municipality of Salinas registered 5.2 and another on April 12, 1993 in the Cibao measured 5.7. An earthquake measuring five points on the Richter scale occurred in San Francisco de Macorís on June 10, 1993, with no material damage reported. The earthquake’s epicenter was located at the fault in the north central area of the town. The president of the Dominican Seismology Foundation, engineer Rafael Corominas says the nation should be ready for an earthquake any day. Engineer Corominas said that historically earthquakes hae occurred at a time span of a minimum of 17 years and a maximum of 73 years.
