Everything about 2007 Peru Earthquake totally explained
|countries affected =
|casualties = 519 confirmed dead
1,366 injured
}}
The
2007 Peru earthquake was an
earthquake measuring 8.0 on the
moment magnitude scale that hit the central coast of
Peru on Wednesday
August 15,
2007; it occurred at 23:40:58
UTC (18:40:58 local time) and lasted for about three minutes. The
epicenter was located at
150 kilometres (93 mi) south-southeast of
Lima at a depth of
39 kilometres (24.2 miles). They were attending mass at the time the earthquake started.
More than 58,000 homes were destroyed. The city of Pisco, which is 260 km (160 mi) southeast of Lima, was about 80% destroyed, and as many as 430 people living there died, with 148 of those deaths happening in a collapsed cathedral in the city's main square.
The government reported 510 deaths.
A
magnitude 5.8
aftershock occurred at 19:02 local time, centered
113 kilometres (70 mi) northeast of Chincha Alta At 19:19 local time, another 5.9 magnitude aftershock occurred, centered
48 kilometres (30 mi) south-southwest of Ica.
The day after, survivors who couldn't be accommodated in local hospitals in Pisco were taken to Lima by
airplane, arriving there later that night. On Sunday,
August 19, President of Colombia
Álvaro Uribe arrived in Ica.
Tectonic summary
This earthquake occurred at the boundary between the
Nazca and
South American tectonic plates, which are converging at a rate of 78 mm (3.1 in) per year. The earthquake occurred as
thrust faulting on the interface between the two plates, with the South American Plate moving up and seaward over the Nazca Plate. Experts say this kind of earthquake is produced about once every 100 years.
Coastal Peru has a history of very large earthquakes. The
August 15 shock originated near the source of two previous earthquakes, both in the magnitude 8 range occurring 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 north of a
magnitude 8.3 earthquake that occurred in 2001 near
Arequipa in southern Peru. The largest earthquake along the coast of Peru was a magnitude 9 that occurred in 1868. It produced a
tsunami that killed several thousand people along the South American coast and also caused damage in
Hawaii. although some areas of the port city of
Callao were evacuated. Tsunami warnings were also made for
Panama and
Costa Rica, and a tsunami watch was posted for
Nicaragua,
Guatemala,
El Salvador,
Mexico and
Honduras. All alerts were cancelled after a tsunami came ashore.
A tsunami warning was also issued by the
Japan Meteorological Agency stating that waves higher than
20 centimetres (8 in) could reach Japan's northern island,
Hokkaidō, on Thursday,
August 16, around 19:00 UTC (Friday, 04:00
JST).
However the tsunami did exist in the peruvian coasts. It flooded part of Lima's Costa Verde highway, and much of Pisco's shore. It has been reported that the tsunami reached as high as 5 meters in the zone of Lagunillas in Pisco neighbourhood's town Paracas .
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