The 8.8 magnitude earthquake that slammed central Chile on Saturday is among the top 10 strongest on record, said the US Geological Survey (USGS), which monitors earthquakes around the world.
Eighteen of the top 20 most powerful earthquakes, including the strongest, struck in a zone of volcanic instability that encircles the Pacific Ocean known as the “Ring of Fire.”
The “Ring” stretches along the western coast of the Americas through the island nations of the South Pacific and on through Southeast Asia.
PHOTO: AFP
Half of the top 20 strongest earthquakes struck the Pacific coast of the Americas and six of those — including four in Chile — struck south America.
The most powerful earthquake ever, a magnitude 9.5 whopper, struck Chile on May 22, 1960, not far from the epicenter of Saturday’s earthquake.
The 1960 quake, known as the Valdivia quake, killed 1,655 people, injured 3,000 and left 2 million homeless. It triggered a tsunami that killed 61 people in Hawaii, 138 in Japan and 32 in the Philippines.
Saturday’s quake belongs to an “elite class” of mega earthquakes, experts said, and is similar to the 2004 Indian Ocean temblor that triggered deadly tsunami waves.
The quake was a type called a “megathrust,” considered the most powerful earthquake on the planet. Megathrusts occur when one tectonic plate dives beneath another. Saturday’s tremor unleashed about 50 gigatonnes of energy and broke about 545km of the fault zone, the USGS National Earthquake Information Center said.
The quake’s epicenter was offshore and occurred about 225km north of the Valdivia quake.
“It’s part of an elite class of giant earthquakes,” USGS geologist Brian Atwater said.
If the magnitude holds, it will tie with the 1906 offshore Ecuador quake as the fifth-largest since 1900.
“We call them great earthquakes. Everybody else calls them horrible,” USGS geophysicist Ken Hudnut said. “There’s only a few in this league.”
The Chile quake was smaller than the Sumatra quake of 2004, a magnitude-9.1 and was not expected to be anything nearly as destructive. That quake and ensuing tsunami killed 230,000 people.
Another difference is that the Chile quake triggered tsunami warnings hours ahead of time in Hawaii and Pacific islands, allowing people time to flee to higher ground.
In 2004, there was little measuring technology in place to warn Indian Ocean countries about incoming killer waves.
More than 100 aftershocks measuring magnitude-5 or larger rattled Chile throughout the day. So far, the quake death toll has surpassed 300 — a number that will likely rise. Several more died when tsunami waves swamped an island off the country’s coast.
Chile is no stranger to violent jolts. In fact, USGS geophysicist Ross Stein called the country an “earthquake hatchery.” Thirteen temblors of magnitude 7 or larger have hit Chile since 1973.
The latest quake took place at a boundary where two plates of the Earth’s crust grind and dive. While that type of action gave rise to the Andes mountains that form the backbone of South America, it’s also the source of some of the largest quakes.
The Chile temblor struck a day after a smaller earthquake shook the southern coast of Japan. Experts said the quakes appear to be unrelated.
There’s also no connection between this quake and the disaster in Haiti, University of Miami geology professor Tim Dixon said.
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