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Following the devastating double earthquake that struck Venezuela on June 24, with recorded magnitudes of 7.2 and 7.5 just 39 seconds apart, alarmist alerts began circulating on Cuban social media, warning of imminent earthquakes in the Bartlett Trench, the southern region of eastern Cuba, and the Caribbean Sea.
According to Juventud Técnica, specialists from the National Seismological Service of Cuba ruled out any direct influence between those events and the seismic activity on the island.
Enrique Diego Arango Arias, head of the National Seismological Service of Cuba at the National Center for Seismological Research (CENAIS), was emphatic: "None of these earthquake alerts or alarms have been issued by a scientific institution dedicated to the study or research of seismic activity in Cuba or the Caribbean."
The specialist also questioned the credibility of those spreading these predictions: “None of those who engage in these alarms are seismologists, to my knowledge. No reputable names appear, with their articles published on earthquake forecasting.”
From a geological perspective, the explanation is clear: Cuba sits on the North American plate, in contact with the Gonave microplate to the south, while the Venezuelan earthquakes occurred at the boundary between the Caribbean plate and the South American plate.
"There should be no direct influence, since the North American plate, where Cuba is located, is not in contact with the Caribbean plate, but rather with the microplate of Gonave, which is to the south of Cuba," clarified Arango Arias.
The expert did acknowledge a theoretical possibility: that a strong earthquake, through the vibrations it generates in the Earth, could trigger events in areas that are already on the verge of releasing accumulated stress.
He illustrated it with a commonplace image: "I always use the example of what happens when you shake a fruit tree: the ripe fruit falls, the ones that were going to drop sooner or later."
Although the earthquakes that occurred in Venezuela do not directly affect Cuba, according to experts, the seismic context of the island in 2026 has been particularly active.
The 6.2 magnitude earthquake that shook western Cuba on June 8, with its epicenter in Pinar del Río, surprised specialists due to the region's historically inactive nature, and it was felt even in Miami and Cancun.
Previously, on March 17, a 6.0 magnitude earthquake struck Imías, in Guantánamo, generating over 900 aftershocks in the first 24 hours.
The area with the highest seismic danger remains the southeast of the country.
The Oriente fault, which runs along the south of Cuba, has been accumulating energy since the 1932 earthquake in Santiago de Cuba — measuring 6.75 in magnitude and intensity of eight degrees on the MSK scale — and could potentially generate a similar event in the future.
The seismologist Dr. Fernando Guasch Hechavarría, an expert in Disaster Risk Management, has warned that the greatest risk for Cuba does not come from Venezuelan earthquakes, but rather from the accumulated structural vulnerability in the region: "The increase in seismic risk in the Caribbean region is a reality and is creating potentially critical disaster scenarios."
Guasch stated that public policies on land use planning in the Greater Antilles are not aligned with the estimated levels of danger, which exponentially increases the risk in the event of any significant seismic activity.
Arango Arias recalled that, in the event of any imminent danger, the relevant institution will be the first to alert the population: “If an imminent danger related to seismic activity is identified, the first to inform the public would be the CENAIS and the National Civil Defense.”
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