A major earthquake of magnitude 6.9 struck off the west coast of Chile on Monday, rocking the capital, Santiago, and briefly causing alarm along the Pacific Coast, but not producing any serious damage.
The quake was centered about 35km west of the coastal city of Valparaiso at a shallow depth of 10km below the sea and about 137km from Santiago, the US Geological Survey said.
The survey twice revised the magnitude before settling on 6.9, a strength usually capable of causing severe damage.
Photo: AFP
The epicenter’s shallow depth of 25km below the sea allowed it to be felt hundreds of kilometers away. Santiago office buildings swayed for about 30 seconds at the end of the workday.
“It was short, but very powerful,” said Paloma Salamo, a 26-year-old nurse, who was in a clinic in Vina del Mar, just north of Valparaiso, when the quake struck.
People ran out of the facility carrying children and some headed for the hills when the tsunami alarm sounded, she said, but calm was soon restored.
Photo: Reuters
Officials canceled a tsunami warning that had been issued in Valparaiso after the Chilean Navy and the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said the quake was not expected to produce a dangerous seismic sea wave.
The center reported small tsunami of 15cm.
There were no reports of structural damage in Valparaiso, but cellphone networks were down in some places, a spokesman with the local government in Valparaiso said.
“We have no reports of victims or significant damage. There have been some landslides in some places, without major complications,” Chilean Minister of the Interior Mario Fernandez said.
“In general the situation is pretty normal, bearing in mind the quake’s intensity,” Fernandez said.
Chile’s state-run Codelco, one of the largest copper mining firms in the world, said its operations were unaffected.
Anglo American, which has copper operations in central Chile, also said operations were normal.
However, interruptions in the electricity supply led the Aconcagua oil refinery to temporarily suspend operations for safety reasons, state-run oil firm ENAP said. There was no damage to either of Chile’s two refineries, it said.
Several aftershocks, including two of of magnitudes 5 and 5.4, were recorded in the same spot and could be felt in Santiago, part of a cluster of tremors from that area in recent days.
Chile, located on the so-called “Pacific Ring of Fire,” has a long history of deadly quakes, including a magnitude 8.8 quake in 2010 off the south-central coast, which also triggered a tsunami that devastated coastal towns..
That was the sixth-largest earthquake ever recorded, according to the USGS. The largest recorded temblor in history was also in Chile, a magnitude 9.5 quake in 1960.
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