Earthquakes in Cuba: Live Map & the Oriente Fault Zone

Cuba sits along the northern edge of the boundary between the Caribbean and North American (Gonâve microplate) tectonic plates, which grind past each other in a mostly strike-slip motion just south of the island. Unlike Mexico or Chile, Cuba is not above a subduction zone, so its earthquakes tend to be shallower, more localised events tied to this transform-fault boundary rather than giant megathrust ruptures.

Almost all of Cuba's seismic hazard is concentrated in the south-east, where the Oriente Fault Zone runs close to Santiago de Cuba and Guantánamo — the same structure responsible for the deadly 1932 Santiago de Cuba earthquake (estimated magnitude 6.75), which killed dozens of people and heavily damaged the city. Western Cuba, including Havana, sits much farther from this boundary and experiences comparatively little seismicity.

On 28 January 2020, a magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck in the Caribbean Sea south of the island, closer to the Cayman Islands and Jamaica than to Cuba itself, but it was still felt strongly across eastern and central Cuba, prompting brief tsunami warnings for the wider Caribbean region. Cuba's Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Sismológicas (CENAIS), based in Santiago de Cuba, monitors the Oriente Fault and the wider region around the clock, since seismologists regard this transform boundary as capable of generating another damaging shallow earthquake.