By the Caribbean Journal staff

A 5.1-magnitude earthquake shook Anguilla Wednesday night, according to the United States Geological Survey.

The quake was seven kilometres east-southeast of Stoney Ground in Anguilla at a depth of 88.4 kilometres.

It was felt in several surrounding islands, including Bonaire, Guadeloupe, St Kitts and Nevis, Antigua and Barbuda, the United States Virgin Islands, Sint Maarten and Puerto Rico.

Melissa Meade, the director of Disaster Management in Anguilla, told Caribbean Journal that there had been no reports of damage thus far to the department.

Anguillans described the quake, which occurred Wednesday at 5:29 PM, as a loud sound followed by shaking.

“You heard it before it happened,” Meade said. “It was a loud noise, like thunder, and then you felt the shaking thereafter.”

The quake comes in area that has been seeing increased activity of late, Dr Joan Latchman, director of the Seismic Research Centre at the University of the West Indies, told Caribbean Journal last year.

“We have begun to see that sort of elevation in the area around Antigua and Barbuda, St Kitts and Nevis and Montserrat,” she said at the time. “In that little circle, we are seeing an elevation of activity.”

As a point of comparison, the devastating earthquake in Haiti in 2010 measured around 7.0 on the Richter scale.