April 29, 1897 Earthquake: Guadeloupe, Antigua, St Kitts

1897, April 29. At 10:15 a.m. Guadeloupe, intensity IX. Over one hundred houses were severely damaged. Many walls, roofs, and small houses were destroyed. Four were killed, some wounded. (Barbados Advocate, 30.4.1897; Nature, Vol. 56, p. 87, 1897).

Antigua (V). At 10:20 a.m. A severe and prolonged shock. (Barbados Advocate, 30.4.1897.

St. Kitts (V). At 1:30 a.m. A sharp shock. (Barbados Advocate, 30.4.1897)

Dominica (IV). At 10:35 a.m. A prolonged shock. (Barbados Advocate, 30.4.1897).

(above from reference #364)

1897, April 29. 10:25 (local time). Magnitude 70, depth 20 km, 16.5 N, 61.8 W. Six dead and 40 wounded in Point-a-Pitre, island of Guadalupe; One dead in Petit-Bourg. Losses estimated at 5.5 million francs, excluding state losses. The military hospital suffered severe damage. It has been the strongest earthquake since 1843, lasting ten to twelve seconds in Point-a-Pitre, strongly felt in Saint-Christophe, Antigua and Dominica (Feuillard, 1985, based on local archives). Damage is reported in the water adduction system, about 25 km in length, due to the fall of support pilasters and damages in the tubes of 50 cm in diameter. The dam of the Grande Riviere in Goyave was settled more than 50 cm. (reference #124)

1897, April 29. West Indies, Guadeloupe (Pointe a Pitre), Antigua, St. Kitts, Dominica. Intensity II which corresponds to buildings may be unroofed or shattered and some may fall, the ground may be badly cracked in places and small landslips occur. (reference #1055)

1897, April 29. Guadeloupe, Dominica, Antigua et St Kitts. Intensity II. (reference #1557)

1897, April 29. 10:15 a.m. Guadeloupe. Comments: A detailed investigation of this earthquake was made by Bernard and Lambert (1988) from French-language sources. They conclude that the highest intensities were confined to a small area close to Pointe-a-Pitre, Guadeloupe. However, the earthquake occurred during a much longer sequence of earthquakes in Montserrat which is about 100 km to the northwest [Montserrat 1897, April 23-27]. The earthquake of April 29 is not mentioned specifically in accounts of the Montserrat earthquakes. (reference #386)

1897 April 29, magnitude 6.5 Mw. The 29 April 1897 earthquake was felt with a maximum intensity of VIII in Guadeloupe. It caused serious damage in Pointe‐à‐Pitre, killing four people. Unlike Bernard and Lambert [1988] who located the 29 April 1897 earthquake just west of Pointe‐à‐Pitre and calculated a magnitude 5.5 for this event, Feuillard [1985] inferred a hypocenter between Basse‐Terre and Montserrat and a magnitude 7. The epicenter proposed by Bernard and Lambert [1988] would be in agreement with a rupture along the E‐W striking Gosier normal fault (GSF) that crosscuts the southern shore of Grande‐Terre and the Pointe‐à‐Pitre Town [Feuillet et al., 2002]. The epicenter proposed by Feuillard [1985] rather suggests a rupture along the southern part of the Bouillante‐Montserrat fault segments (BMFS) between the 1690/1985 and 2004 earthquakes (reference #13355)