BBC reports that the tremor, which was centered off the coast some 144 miles north-west of the nation’s capital, caused buildings to sway in Santiago as the quake struck at the heart of the country.
Advertisement
According to CNN, the quake’s epicenter was about 29 miles west of Illapel, Chile, USGS said.
According to an update from the New York Times, one person died in a northern city, while there was flooding in some coastal cities.
Chile’s government has now urged residents to evacuate the coastline.
A buoy off the coast of Chile is registering tsunami anomalies, further confirming that a giant wave is headed for Chile and possibly Hawaii.
Christchurch CDEM said it was seeking “more detailed information about the Chilean natural disaster and the potential tsunami risk for coastal Banks Peninsula”.
“People started screaming that everything was shaking”, said Jorge Medina, a Santiago resident.
The initial tremor was followed by at least six strong aftershocks ranging from 5.3 to 6.4 magnitude.
A tsunami warning was initially in place for the whole of Chile and Peru s Pacific coastline.
At least two people were killed and 10 others were injured, authorities said.
The precautionary alert for Peru was later called off, civil defense officials said, but scared residents in the city of Ilo, close to the border with Chile, remained out on the streets and on higher ground nonetheless.
Illapel’s mayor Denis Cortes confirmed that one woman in his city had been killed according to the Associated Press, but he declined to give any details.
The waves were sparked by a massive natural disaster that hit earlier.
Coastal areas were ordered to evacuate shortly after the quake struck, including the port city of Valparaiso near Santiago.
An quake measuring magnitude 8.8 struck off the coast of Chile’s Maule region on February 27, 2010.
Chilean authorities issued a tsunami alert for the country’s entire coast, and USA officials posted an alert for Hawaii.
Now the weather is dry across much of Chile, including near where the quake occurred, AccuWeather Meteroologist Jordan Root said. In 2010, a magnitude 8.8 quake killed 500 people and destroyed 220,000 homes.
Chile’s emergency office warned that big waves caused by the quake could hit the coast by 11 p.m. Australia and Auckland East are also on the tsunami warning list, but the waves are expected to be less than 30 cm by the time it reaches the shores of Oceania.
Advertisement
Chile, which runs along a highly seismic and volcanic zone where tectonic plates meet, is no stranger to earthquakes.
