“The damages have been minor,” Acevedo said. “No one has required our services.”
However, Puerto Ricans criticized the island's government through social media, saying that no emergency alert was issued immediately after the quake.
Authorities said they would have sent an alert immediately if people had been at risk of a tsunami.
One of the largest and most damaging earthquakes to hit Puerto Rico occurred in October 1918, when a 7.3-magnitude quake struck near the island's northwest coast, unleashing a tsunami and killing 116 people.
While Puerto Rico experiences small earthquakes daily that people cannot feel, it is rare for bigger quakes to strike the island, Baez said. Among those was a 5.4-magnitude quake that shook the U.S. territory in March 2011 and another one of the same magnitude that struck on Christmas Eve in 2010.
Baez said Monday's earthquake occurred along a fault previously generated by two tectonic plates crashing into each other.
Updated on: January 13, 2014 22:26 IST
