A 10-person Fairfax County search-and-rescue crew landed in Panama on Saturday, Oct. 10, to assess damage from a 7.7-magnitude earthquake.
Virginia Task Force 1, the urban search-and-rescue unit sponsored by Fairfax County Fire and Rescue, posted on X that its members reached Panama within 18 hours of the quake and began moving toward affected areas.
The team is inspecting hospitals, water treatment plants and schools to determine which buildings are safe and where essential services can resume, according to a Facebook update from the task force.
The quake hit at 12:56 p.m. local time Friday, Oct. 9, near the town of Tonosí on the Azuero Peninsula, the Miami Herald reported. A second earthquake measuring 6.6 followed later that day, and seismologists recorded more than 100 aftershocks, according to the Associated Press. Panama's government declared a state of emergency on Saturday, Oct. 10.
Preliminary assessments by Panama's National Civil Protection System counted at least 142 damaged homes, 188 schools, 20 healthcare facilities and nine bridges across nine provinces. Authorities said those figures were still rising. Twenty-seven people were reported injured as of Sunday, Oct. 11, with no deaths confirmed, though officials warned the full picture remained unclear in communities cut off by collapsed bridges and landslides.
The U.S. State Department mobilized the Fairfax County team alongside a second 10-person unit from the Los Angeles County Fire Department, for a combined 20-person response, according to a State Department release. The deployment came at the request of the Panamanian government. The State Department also committed $5 million in humanitarian assistance.
The Panama mission marks Virginia Task Force 1's third international earthquake deployment in 2026. The Fairfax County-based team traveled to Venezuela in June and to Colombia in August, where it partnered with the same Los Angeles County unit on structural assessments, Patch reported.
No return date has been announced. The mission remains ongoing.
