Looking at the PAGER info, it looks like it was pretty far from the largest cities and only affected them, and Panama City in particular, minimally, which will limit the impact quite a bit.
I am in the hills just outside of penonome,panama. The initial rumble made the power go out and I could see visible shaking, but not quite enough to damage my house. There are some damaged homes and commercial buildings, but usually the older or poorly co structed ones. We are not used to earthquakes around here. There are still small rumbles happening even right now.
It's not called the Pacific Ring Of Fire for nothing. There's earthquakes all up and down the coast, from Chile all the way to Alaska and wrapping around to the Asian coasts, all the time.
It is, but there's a subduction zone just off their northern coast following the curve of the Lesser Antilles so I could see how someone might mistakenly lump it into the pacific ring. It's not that far away from the northern Andes, in the grand scheme of things.
https://www.telemetro.com/nacionales/asi-se-vivio-el-fuerte-...
https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us6000u18k...
https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/pr20262770...
https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us6000u18k...
https://multimedia.panama-canal.com/index.html
Wanna tell us common folks what that means?
https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us6000u18k...
Scale is 1 to 12. This is a 9.