Featured earthquakes #3 : Peru

Thursday, August 16, 2007

Featured earthquakes #3 : Peru

M8.0 Near the Coast of Central Peru.

This large earthquake occurred on Wednesday, August 15, 2007 at 23:40:56 UTC, at 30.2 km depth. It was 45 km (25 miles) WNW of Chincha Alta, Peru and 150 km (95 miles) SSE of LIMA, Peru.

At the time of this writing, the earthquake is known to have claimed some 330 lives, and have injured over 1300 people. You can read more up-to-date news agency reports about this earthquake: Reuters, BBC, CNN.

Here is the USGS ShakeMap for this event. It shows the intensity of shaking induced by the earthquake. It reaches very strong / severe level near the fault plane (which is shown by a black rectangle).
This earthquake occurred in a region known for its large magnitude events. The tectonic information that follows comes directly from the USGS web-page on this event.

The August 15 shock originated near the source of two earthquakes, both in the magnitude 8 range, that occurred in 1908 and 1974. This earthquake is south of the source of a magnitude 8.2 earthquake that occurred in northern Peru in 1966 and it is north of the magnitude 8.3 earthquake that occurred in 2001 near Arequipa, Peru.

The largest earthquake along the coast of Peru is the magnitude 9 that occurred in 1868. The 1868 earthquake produced a tsunami that killed several thousand people along the South American coast and also caused damage in Hawaii.

For those of you who like to look at seismograms, here are some of the records for this event taken from Rapid Earthquake View.