One person was killed and 85 injured on Wednesday, as two strong aftershocks shook Ecuador, a month after a devastating natural disaster left some 700 dead, President Rafael Correa said.
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Ecuador had earlier been hit by 7.8 tremors which killed more than 650 people last month.
Ecuador’s 110,000-barrel-per-day Esmeraldas refinery was working at 77 percent capacity after some operations were halted due to the first quake on Wednesday, the government said before the second tremor.
Classes were cancelled in Esmeraldas and Manabi provinces until Monday to give the authorities time to inspect school and university buildings for structural damage.
It said the epicenter of the quake was 82 km (50 miles) south of Esmeraldas on the northwestern coast of the Andean country.
The extent of damage from the second quake was not immediately clear, though the first caused relatively little damage.
“Despite the alarm and the scare and the possibility of new damage.it’s normal, you expect aftershocks for two months after”, he said.
The only people who were injured in Wednesday’s quake were people who “ran outside, tripped, things like that”, Correa said, without offering any numbers. Both are less than 100 miles (155 kilometers) west-northwest of the capital, Quito.
People gather on the streets minutes after a tremor was felt in Quito, Ecuador May 18, 2016. No injuries or damage were reported there, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos said. It has been followed by hundreds of aftershocks, at least five of them of magnitude 6.0 or higher.
Ecuador, still recovering from the economic and human toll of the major quake that rocked the South American country last month, was hit with two aftershocks Wednesday, hours apart. President Rafael Correa has hiked taxes to fund the recovery but says it will take years to rebuild the beach towns and tourist hubs leveled by the quake.
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“We were scared, we left the building because it started moving”, said Pilar Guacho, 39, a municipal employee in Quito.
