This article is more than 7 months old

This article is more than 7 months old

A powerful magnitude 7.7 earthquake has struck in the sea south of Cuba, shaking a vast area from Mexico to Florida and beyond, but there were no immediate reports of casualties or major damage.

Tsunami warnings for Cuba, Jamaica and the Cayman Islands were issued but lifted shortly afterward with no reports of major damage.

The disaster management agency for the Cayman Islands government said on Twitter that several sinkholes had opened and at least one property was structurally damaged, but there were no confirmed reports of injuries or deaths.

Angie Watler, a spokeswoman for police on Cayman Brac, the island nearest the epicenter of the quake, said members of the public had reported some damage to buildings and to a swimming pool at the Carib Sands resort on the south of the island.

The epicentre of the quake on Tuesday was 139km (86 miles) north-west of Montego Bay, Jamaica, and 140km (87 miles) west-south-west of Niquero, Cuba. It was a relatively shallow 10km (six miles) beneath the surface.

The International Tsunami Information Center initially said that tsunami waves of up to one meter (3ft) were possible on some coasts in Mexico, Belize, Cuba, Honduras, Jamaica and the Cayman Islands.

But it soon lifted the warning, saying: “The tsunami threat has now largely passed.”

Buildings shook in downtown Miami in Florida, but the quake was not strongly felt in the Cuban capital of Havana or in Kingston, Jamaica.

The temblor was felt strongly in Santiago, the largest far-eastern Cuban city, said Belkis Guerrero, who works in a Catholic cultural center in the center of Santiago

“We were all sitting and we felt the chairs move,” she said. “We heard the noise of everything moving around.” She said there was no apparent damage in the heart of the colonial city. “It felt very strong but it doesn’t look like anything happened,’’ she told the Associated Press.