TORONTO -- Popular tourist attraction Punta Ventana, a natural rock formation, appears to have been destroyed by a 5.8-magnitute earthquake in Puerto Rico.
The temblor has destroyed homes and buildings in the U.S. territory’s southern end and appears to have affected the local landmark natural rock archway, which was shaped by centuries of ocean waves.
Tourists had regularly snapped pictures of videos atop of Punta Ventana in Guayanilla, Puerto Rico.
In a Facebook post, Guayanilla press official Glidden López Torres touched upon the destruction and wrote, “today our icon remains in the memory of all.”
On Monday, side-by-side images of the destruction of the iconic wonder were widely shared on social media.
Some of these included a tweet from a student-run meteorological laboratory at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez. Translated from Spanish, their tweet read in part: “The Punta Ventana (Window Point ) has disappeared.”
The New York Times, NPR and The Miami Herald have also reported on the rock formation appearing to collapse after the earthquake.
The Herald spoke to a 22-year-old Guayanilla resident Denniza Colon who said she walked by the arch on Monday and noticed it was gone. “This is really sad,” she told the outlet.
NPR reported that a “string of recent seismic movements had already knocked a large chunk out of the window.”
QUAKE HIT EARLY MONDAY MORNING
This latest quake hit at about 6:32 a.m. local time and led to homes being destroyed, loss of power across swaths of the island and rockslides covering entire roads.
No casualties have been reported.
But this devastating quake is simply the latest in a flurry of earthquakes -- ranging from 4.7 to 5.1 on the Richter Scale -- that have rocked the U.S. territory since Dec. 28.
There is no public earthquake warning system in Puerto Rico except for the sirens that are supposed to ring in case of a tsunami.
With files from The Associated Press
