M3.8 Earthquake near The Bottom, Bonaire, Caribbean Netherlands — 02 September 2026

Minor earthquakes in this range are felt by people close to the epicentre as a brief jolt or rattle, but they very rarely cause any damage.

A magnitude 3.8 earthquake radiates roughly 7.3 tons of TNT equivalent in seismic energy.

The USGS assigns this earthquake a significance score of 221, which is below the USGS threshold of more than 600 for its significant-earthquake list. The ranking combines magnitude with available Did You Feel It responses and PAGER alert level; it is not a direct measurement of damage.

That is about 04:17 local solar time at the epicentre, in the early hours of the morning.

This event was shallower than 62% of the 8 earthquakes recorded in Caribbean Netherlands in our catalogue and stronger than 62% of them.

The epicentre was located at 17.4213, -63.7791 — 60 km west-southwest of The Bottom, Bonaire. The closest other recorded event was a magnitude 3.4 earthquake 103 km north-northwest of here on 12 August 2026.

The nearest other settlements in our records are Blowing Point Village (88 km northeast), Charlotte Amalie (152 km west-northwest) and Bajandas (224 km west-northwest).

At 135 km this was an intermediate-depth earthquake. Energy from events at this depth spreads out before it reaches the surface, which usually means weaker shaking near the epicentre than a shallow quake of the same magnitude, but shaking felt across a wider area.

This catalogue does not ingest eyewitness responses, so it cannot confirm where this earthquake was felt. Based on magnitude alone, an event this size may be noticed locally, especially close to the epicentre. Its intermediate depth normally reduces peak shaking near the epicentre compared with a shallow event of the same magnitude.

The USGS record does not carry a link to NOAA tsunami information. That field is not an all-clear and does not state whether a tsunami occurred. In this case, a damaging tsunami would be less likely because at M3.8 it falls below the magnitude 6.5 threshold that generally applies before a submarine earthquake displaces enough water to generate a damaging tsunami; its 135 km focal depth is too great to deform the sea floor significantly; it occurred inland rather than beneath the sea floor. For an active coastal alert, use tsunami.gov or your local warning authority.

No further earthquakes have been recorded within about 150 km of the epicentre since this event was recorded.

58 earthquakes of magnitude 4 or above have been logged within roughly 200 km of this epicentre in our catalogue. The strongest was a magnitude 5.6 event near Cruz Bay on 04 May 2025. This M3.8 event released about 575 times less energy than that event.

31 earthquakes have been recorded within 100 km of this epicentre in the past year, 2 of them in the past 30 days.

This earthquake is part of the September 2026 worldwide record, and of earthquakes in Caribbean Netherlands during September 2026. Browse the full monthly archive to compare periods.